Ten Days in Mombasa
by Minds' 3y3
Summary: In wartorn Mombasa, thousands of troops and refugees funnel toward an old, rundown hospital in the slums, the last stronghold of a city besieged by an army bent on extermination. Overcrowded and undersupplied, the hospital is not the bastion it needs to be to provide so many people their safety. In what many think are humanity's last days, distrust, fear, and guns rule all.
1. Part 1

**Ten Days in Mombasa**

By Electromotive Force and Mr. 125

 **Part 1**

 **"Fourteen"**

November 7, 2552

Today Woody and the Brit played cards like they always did, the couple of weeks they've been stuck here in the Recovery Ward.

It's a small space with basic provisions, a series of cots turned hospital beds filled with beaten-down people being quietly strangled by mounds of crusty bandages and gauze. The two threw down cards on the bed that was between them and chatted like they always did, playing across the foot of the thin, stained bedroll because the man who lay in it had no legs. He'd been there longer than either of them and didn't seem to mind them because he didn't really talk at all. He just stared at the opposite wall all day, maybe all night too. They thought he lost his legs in the opening days of the Covie invasion because they used to yell for the nurse when he'd suddenly begin to bleed from his stumps and slowly stain his sheets. They understood it was a slow death to go out like that, but it hasn't happened in a while so the wounds must have healed a bit by now. So his war was done, luckily for him. It was a gross thing to say with him lying here like that but he had been lucky in that exact way. It was sad, dirty luck.

Woody and the Brit were not so damaged—they were Corporal Nathan Woodrow and Private Doll Fraser respectively, Army troops both. He was from a nothing-special outfit out of 25th Infantry, she from a unit called The Highwayman: 906th Brigade, renowned for its actions in hellhole places like Cassandra and Aurelia after that, rumours and stories that had spread by way of soldiers who came and went. She had a bandage wrapped around her stomach and ribs because a red-hot alien spike had taken a bite out of her fleshy side; he had a bandage wrapped around his wrist because he'd opened up his veins lengthwise in the shower when no one was watching—he hadn't told her but she suspected anyway. This happened some time ago and underneath the dressing the skin had already come back together but it was still unsightly. It was still shameful.

Both ended up here. She was on painkillers and he on antidepressants but they both belonged. The recovery ward was just another room in a military complex in the African plains somewhere between Voi and Mombasa and everyone inside knew it as IRIS Station for whatever reason. It was mostly quiet save for the occasional (sometimes predictive) sorties launching and landing here that smothered the entire complex in that thought-drowning wail, or the growling multi-wheeled convoys dressed up like they were war-rigs from some barren apocalypse that thundered inward and unleashed hordes of troops from all walks into the support sectors of the place, their boots barking up and down halls and rooms for days at a time before heading off into the fray again. And then things would get quiet for long periods thereafter. Some stayed, most went.

Just under a month now with the arrival of the 906th plus other elements of the 7th Army, a defensive super-unit, and the base had grown into a massive nerve centre of UNSC operations encompassing every facet of war. Reinforcements, whether they were downed flyboys or plastered leathernecks or Helljumpers who lost their way or doggies like Woody and the Brit, they all got funneled here, and from here sent to get pincushioned or melted or blown up or run over by the Covenant all over East Africa, everywhere there was fighting. They all got shipped back here with whatever was left of them, fixed up to minimally-acceptable standards and numbed up with painkillers and antidepressants and whatever else there was before returning to battle. That was the war at this point, the way things were going.

Meanwhile Woody and the Brit played cards like they always did but today she said to him, "I think my number's come up, Woody. I can feel it."

"Your side's still raw, isn't it?" Woodrow leafed through his fan in no hurry, preoccupied with all things that weren't the war. "Nurses can't seem to plug you up. That'll play I think. You still scrape at it during the night?"

"No matter," Fraser said. "Things've changed. My sabbatical's almost over—they want to empty some beds. They won't wait to one hundred percent, not anymore they won't. They'll call in a bigwig, some fucking Navy quack to cup my tits and declare me fit for duty, send me off with a rifle and an Aspirin. I know it. And there'll be nothing I can do."

"You got hit bad. Anyone can see that."

"It doesn't mean they'll care. You'll get called up too. A week after me. After I'm gone they'll start to look at you like plump prime-rib because you've got two working arms and legs, and everything's gone to shit and I'm dead. They'll send you up to the front, they'll give our dear friend here a set of wheels and ship him out a week after you," Fraser said. Woodrow stared into his palm. "The war isn't over. There's no end in sight, no telling what they'll do to us. They'll get you so doped up and rowdy you'll have no idea where the hell you are."

"Doesn't sound too bad a trade off, then."

"Fuck off, Woody. Listen to me, you think you're doing alright here, do you? If the brassholes prefer men do the fighting, they'll get men. Already had a couple of mates banged up worse than me get rounded up and thrown back into the mixer—haven't heard from them since. When that happens, when they come for me, I know where I'm ending up, and I don't like it. I've got to get back to my own unit. They'll take care of me."

"Where are they now?"

"Mombasa," Fraser said.

"Ground zero," Woodrow said.

"No. Well, yes, but no." She leaned forward, lowered her voice. "Fighting is starting to concentrate somewhere else again and I'm pretty sure I know where. Where the bloodied boys all come from as of late... every single one. I've met them. I talked to them. I've heard the action's shifting west, towards Voi."

"Your unit'll shift right along with it."

"Not what I heard. They went in when Mombasa was still hot. They're still there for the business of saving lives, taking in refugees, playing Mother Theresa for those left behind. They're stationed at a hospital out there, the whole battalion."

Woodrow said, "It's been three weeks. How do you know it's not a crater by now?"

"Supplies are still going out to them. Reinforcements too."

"Reinforcements, or replacements?"

Fraser gave him a black look.

He added, "One and the same at this point."

"Have you seen how it is outside this room, Woody? Have you set foot past the hallway in all this time?"

Woodrow said nothing. He wasn't allowed to piss without the ward nurse standing over his shoulder. Fraser, too, must have known this.

She said, "It's apocalyptic, mate. As much as I'd love to forget that the world's on fire while we mess about in here, I simply am not high enough to do that."

"That's fair."

"So I'm going."

"What do you mean?"

"To Mombasa, I'm going." Fraser glanced at his wrist. It was quick but Woodrow caught it. He expected the next part. "And I want you to come with me."

Woodrow began to shake his head. "God dammit no."

"What'll it take, then?"

"Some quack to cup my nuts and clear me for duty, and fresh marching orders from the top. Get out there and be somebody, Woodrow. Yes, sir! Proceeding, sir!"

"You go back to fight on their terms, you know where they'll put you. You know why the Marines look down on us? It's 'cause units like the one they'll dump you into. Marine Corps plants flags, Army soaks up the bullets. Why? Because they take these kids too scared to join up with Green that they were guilt-tripped into the reserves, the Guard, the Girl Guides, whatever. Now that the Covenant are kicking down our door, they're getting their cards, they're getting called up, and they're going absolutely mental. And everyone ends up here, the epicentre. You don't want to be fighting with those guys, once you're out there. They're a bunch of shit nerves armed with big guns. Forget the Covenant. If you stay, you'll end up back here one way or another: a couple of limbs blown to Serengeti, or all of you in one perfect piece sealed up in a goddamn zipper bag. I guarantee it. That won't happen to me. I won't let it."

Woodrow was silent a long time. But he asked afterwards: "How are we getting there?"

Fraser leered her dog teeth. Always with a plan that one.

* * *

The sound of crowds cheering further back faded such that the conversation ahead prevailed, soft in volume but ominous in nature. Still, Lieutenant Blake Pennington glanced over his shoulder once again as he trailed closely behind his superior officers, Captain Lawson and General LeMay. The combat uniforms worn by the men and women of the Seventh Army were stained and wrinkled and tattered, a clear contrast to the two men in front. They made small talk while offhandedly discussing how they envisioned future strategies would likely unfold, all the while conceding to one another that anything could change once they met with Lord Hood. The Admiral would have the final say.

While the two senior officers marched on in lockstep toward the elevator, the young LT couldn't help himself, again and again glancing aft as he walked. The sights that beckoned along the Eastern horizon were amazing—horrific and amazing just like Zaragosa was right before the planet's last survivors fled. Just like Reach. But there was no fleeing this time. There was nowhere else to go.

Spooled up engines could be heard idling far below. The Black Cat Sub-Prowler awaited them, and the trio entered the lift. Just before the doors slid shut, Pennington glanced at the scene a final time: past the harmonious chord of soldiers reveling in the sun, a red and black haze lingered above the metropolis, smothering it on all sides.

"Well, anyways, how was your trip, Eric?"

"Boring, I'm glad to say…at least until Reach. And now this."

"And your frigate, the…"

" _Thermisticles_. One-hundred percent. We were able to sideskirt all hostiles en route. Doesn't look too good topside, I might add. You probably already knew that." Captain Lawson drew a deep breath. "I have to say, sir, it was a little jarring touching down here and getting soldiers on the other end of the line. I was expecting _your_ answer."

The doors opened. LeMay stepped out first and led the way to the stealth vessel lying in wait out in the open, guiding them around the perimeter of the structure. "A little ad-hoc, but it all worked out in the end. And look at what we cobbled together with the help of the Seventh. An Assault Carrier. Who would've thought?"

All three officers then glanced rearward in unison. They saw for themselves the remains of the smoking, shorn-in-half behemoth still veering toward the Indian Ocean, its silhouette completely alight in brilliant, blue plasma belching from its mortal wounds along with the gold light of a setting sun. Despite the back half of the vessel still being under its own propulsion and putting up a fight against gravity, its fate was decided. Though to LeMay, Lawson, and Pennington, its presence seemed so fixed and permanent like its defeat was contested by all the Covenant forces here. Despite its extreme distance to their location, it wouldn't be long before it impacted the water, maybe another five minutes at current velocity and altitude.

LeMay continued, "I mean, how long did it take us to come up with that operation and realize its success, thirty minutes? An hour? I'm sure Lord Hood will have nothing but praise for you and me once we rendezvous. That'll surely give us some clout and put us on the good foot, especially with the ambition of this mission. You still think you can pull it off?"

"Sirs," Pennington quickened his step after them, "What about Mombasa?"

Without a glance behind him, LeMay answered, "Oh, I think the Seventh has that handled. Let's leave them to their mission. Yours is ahead. And it'll be no less difficult than theirs."

* * *

Colonel Mattis and much of the personnel remaining at the rooftop craned their necks and tracked the departing stealth vessel as it ascended the highest reaches of the Command Post. A fountain of debris racing after it, the ship disappeared beyond a massive thunderhead miles above within seconds.

The outpost became much quieter.

"Wonder if we'll ever see him again." Major Wu remarked, panning his sights back to the city across the plains.

"Doubt it." Mattis answered. "Maybe on a holo-display, if anything."

"Hopefully to coordinate another strike like _that_." Fontaine said.

"That was pretty epic." Wu smirked at the Chief. "Wasn't it?"

Rion simply nodded, joining Wu in his absent-minded scrutiny of Mombasa. Somehow, he figured that the best moments were now behind them.

"Better start to re-engage." Mattis muttered as the cheers started dwindling. "That small victory is unlikely to happen again." Now, all was silent on the rooftop except for servo motors of auto defense turrets and antennas constantly repositioning. "But it'll put 'em in a lull for a while, so let's capitalize on it."

Soldiers began to file downward into the Support Cell and lower, holding conversations with one another as they went. Mattis stopped Wu at the top of the ramp before he could leave: "A minute, Major. I wanna talk about your coordination of relief efforts in Mombasa."

"Yes sir. Well, more like playing the brigade's supply analyst."

"I understand you capture _all_ of the reports flowing from the hospital." Mattis looked like he'd had something prepared to say, but threw it out and settled for, simply, "How's that going?"

Along with his duties on the base under Mattis, Wu had been working with elements of the battalion stationed there to fly in fresh troops and supplies from the IRIS site. Whenever and whatever they needed to continue existing, he made sure he was able to provide for them. All they had to do was come and get it, and he was all too happy to see them. It meant they were still here—still present and fighting. Except that fewer and fewer soldiers were making their way back to IRIS. And for a time lasting one week, there were no visits. The Covenant air patrols had a tight vigil over the skies these days, and with communications down at the field site in Mombasa, data and messages had to be sent via drone lest pilots felt lucky enough to risk manned flights—which were few and far between the other delivery method. Only as absolutely needed. Canned food and bullets, basically. A bandaid plan was put together that would take another few days to fully materialize: disassemble and ferry pieces of a new comms dish out to the site, one drone delivery at a time. The idea came courtesy of Chief Warrant Officer Fontaine, an ONI specialist attached to this base of operations. It would restore much-needed communication with them and then reports would flow in up to the second, but with Mattis asking for a report like this informally and way out of schedule, Wu knew there was trouble ahead.

"They're making progress out there, sir."

"To expectations?" Mattis asked. "In your opinion. Need brutal honesty, if you'll give it."

Projected outcomes were within a proposal made to Mattis when 7th Army mission-planners conceived of the idea to send troops into Mombasa which had been in a state of shellshock after the October invasion. The proposal that Mattis had signed off on had a set of objectives and deadlines that were to be met conditionally for the mission to keep trundling forward, and perhaps more importantly projected casualties figures that would be too much to bear.

In this they'd fallen far behind. On both counts. Until now they'd had a bit of leeway because from the get-go, the situation in the city was different than reports and intelligence had suggested. Circumstances have changed, Wu had been able to tell Mattis whenever he asked, and business continued as usual; he'd ease off, let them breathe. But now, Mattis, ever sharp—the 906th commander not for no reason—wasn't simply inquiring about how things were going. Wu knew that.

"In my opinion," Wu said, navigating his words, "it's promising progress. The first sign of failure I'll be the first to know after Watson himself. And I'll call it. There have been setbacks, but nothing they can't recover from."

Mattis made Wu uncomfortable with his stare that followed, and the sheer height difference between the two played into a false perception that the colonel literally looked down his nose at the major. But the preconception was invalidated when Mattis eased his stance and said, "All right, I trust you to determine the best use of our resources here because I'd like a full head-count as soon as possible. When should we be expecting communications to be restored at the FOB?"

"Any day now. Maybe tomorrow. Something big on the agenda?"

"Day's about to come where we start migrating troops to, well, where the real fight is happening."

The bombed-out road to Voi.

Wu said, "Mombasa is no less important, sir. In my opinion."

"I understand that. But it's time we start concentrating our efforts, you see. I'm just going to speak straight with you, Major. Something big's about to go down out west. LeMay and the others above us are being coy about it, maybe for good reason, but it's no secret the enemy is amassing closer to IRIS now. The brigade is scattered and I want nothing more than to bring our people home. Can we do that if we needed to right now?"

"The decision to withdraw is yours, of course."

The colonel studied the younger officer. He knew he was putting on a brave face; he wasn't oblivious to the work the major had put in over the weeks they'd been here.

Wu continued, shoulders slumping, "Capabilities need to be re-assessed. I'll task a team to check and double check Watson's capacity for phased withdrawal as well as all-out evac and have an assessment ready for you well before the sun goes down. Any shortfall identified will be backfilled by us when the time comes to pull everyone out of there... if the time should come."

Mattis said, "I know you've got a lot on your plate, but that's what I want. Whether that happens ultimately depends on them—and to a certain extent, you. Pulling out of Mombasa's under serious consideration. I won't lie about that. Most of the Marines and ODSTs have done so already. Those who've been left behind...they're planning separate rescue ops for them and they're nothing too flashy. But they are getting the _hell_ out of there, no matter how you look at it. Maybe it's our turn, with our people. You've done your job, I know you have. I have a lot of confidence in you, but it's Watson and the troops on the ground that need to hold up their end. If that doesn't happen, well..."

"It'll be a tough call for them to hear," Wu said. "They've toiled, all of them, ten times as much as I have. Than anyone here, really—Marines are the ones leading the charge down Tsavo Highway, not us."

"Bashing their heads against it, maybe. Covies have it locked down tighter than a snare drum," Mattis muttered. "Major, the thing of it is, Nine-oh-sixth is being tapped to join a concerted offensive that the heads have been planning for a while. It's the big one. If there's doubt that has any weight about what _this_ brigade is doing, it comes from the very top."

"Sir, when?"

"In a few days."

Wu didn't look pleased.

Mattis held up his hands. "I was told only this morning, so you can see where this...anxiety...is suddenly coming from."

"Work's being done in Mombasa, sir, I guarantee it."

"I need to see that for myself, what they're doing. If there is progress still happening out there—true progress—then I need to be made aware of it so that I can sell it. Otherwise, it's time to start transitioning. We're losing people out there...I've read most of your reports, I know what's going out to them each time. Ordnance—fine, I hope that we're stacking up Covies—but the cost to us in manpower? Food and medicine? It all comes from here, out of our own pocket, Major—allotments, that's all we have, all of us, finite as they come—and we've got our own front to fight on right here. Gearing up for big plans, even longer days to come than these, and we'll be needing to free up those resources when our casualties start coming in—"

"—First Battalion _are_ our casualties." Wu couldn't help himself and regretted it immediately.

But Mattis ignored that outburst. He knew the Major had been the most invested in that operation, so he was very patient when he said: "So let's say we stay in Mombasa for the long-term. To what end then?"

Wu swallowed. It was impossible to quantify. The only way to completely succeed in their objective was to purge the city of Covenant, and given what they had to work with they were in no position to really do so. They simply needed more of everything.

Wu and those he was in contact with in Mombasa had resolved to stay on the assignment until they could no longer, working instead towards an agreed-upon degree of success. Them just being in Mombasa was helping, he had to believe.

"I need to see some sign of life down there," Mattis continued. "I need to see that it's a city still worth fighting for, that there's a reason we're still there. It may come to a point that it's smarter to cut our losses, and we'll need to recognize that sooner rather than too late."

"The reason we're still in Mombasa now is the same reason we went there in the first place. Why it's still worth fighting for," Wu said slowly, "well, that's all in my reports." He recited from memory, "Day one: two-thousand-one-hundred-thirty-nine civilians transferred to the IRIS site. Day two: forty-two-eighteen civilians. By the end of week one: _twenty-one-thousand_ civilians out of the warzone, sir. It goes on."

"And then it plateaus at some point. Gets lower, and has been getting lower."

Wu was silent.

"All right," Mattis offered, "that's _not_ nothing. I can respect you're passionate about all this, and the battalion has done one helluva job so I commend all of them, and you. All I ask is that you try to be objective as well. Crazy as it sounds, I'm flipping both sides of the coin. As commander I have to. Both of us need to accept that the unit that went in three weeks ago is not the same one out there now, given all that they've been through. They went in because somebody needed to—I had no objections then—but it seems to me that their mission now runs counter to Seventh Army's foremost objective: run an efficient, effective defense better than damn well anybody can and offer synergistic benefits to advance the UNSC's war strategy, _wherever_ it takes us. What benefit have we provided since refugee arrivals declined sharply? There hasn't been a single UNSC straggler recovered from either side of Mombasa since last week as well. Can we evacuate more people or take back enemy-held territory, or both? That's what the UNSC heads are counting on. I'd rather have me repurpose the brigade before someone else above me feels the need to. Especially someone who can't even spell our names. As I've said, I'm not the only one getting wind of the latest trends.

"Nine-oh-sixth is not quite at brigade combat strength anymore," Mattis continued. "First Battalion has lost real estate out there, lost people. Unless modern ground warfare has drastically changed in the last few minutes without my knowledge, strength in numbers still applies. We're fighting against what full divisions ought to be. Shouldering that kind of weight with a quarter of the manpower and means...that's not a lot of calculus required for me to draw simple conclusions. Lot of eyes on us as usual, and it won't do to suffer something like the loss of a whole battalion out there. Especially when so many more have already been evacuated from Mombasa. A wholly acceptable number, I might add."

"There's still more. There's always still more," Wu said quietly. "Those civilians we got out of there early on, they flocked to us—to the hospital because it's the best place to go. Sir, it's the _only_ place to go for them. Over there they're still digging people out of the rubble, pulling them out of their homes going door to door if they have to because now most of them are too scared to leave. The streets are a no-man's land. If you'd seen it for yourself..."

"I've been at war half my life, Mister," Mattis said, voice lowering to a rasp. "I've seen it. Seen at least a dozen Mombasas, hard as it is for me to say, and they all end up the same. Can't overturn every stone in the city, Wu. Much as you or I would love to try. Time's running out. We may even come to realize that the mission never had a chance at completion. Some would realize that a week in. Some might never, and never leave. I won't say when to kill this thing myself, though I strongly think we've crossed that line already. I leave it up to you to make the call. I will say something, though, Major, and it's that Allan Watson and I have known each other for over a decade and a half. If that isn't something like a friend then I don't know what is. So, I'm close to the matter too as are the rest of the people in my brigade that have friends stuck over there currently and that's how they see it, stuck. But you and I know the Covies aren't the ones keeping them there...it's us. You, specifically, but they'll see it as me and I'll bear it with nary a fuckin' word because this is my unit—I take full responsibility. I always will. So all that said, if there's a chance I get to make sure they don't all get wiped out, then I'm pulling them out. Every last soldier of mine whether they like it or not—whether _you_ like it or not. If that makes me selfish, then so be it. But that's the way I feel about it."

"I'll make the right choice, sir," Wu said. "When it comes down to it."

Mattis merely nodded.

In this cordial way the matter seemed settled, but only for now.

Rion Fontaine, who had left to grab a cup of coffee, returned to the rooftop and unrolled his flex-display. He navigated toward the 906th IMINT portal where he was presented with up-to-the-minute satellite imagery and whatever data the drone patrols were processing at any given instant. "Hey, gents," he called out, "if anyone needs to ferry anything to the FOB, better do it now. Hostile aircraft have vacated. No telling when they'll be back, though."

Mattis told them, "I have work to do, gentlemen. Major, I'm assuming you have a shipment outbound to Mombasa in the works?"

"I do. Those birds should be nearly done prepping, sir."

Mattis nodded that skeptical nod again, still scrutinizing the man. "Let's get them out quick. I'll keep an eye out for your report."

"You'll have it."

Before he walked away, the colonel murmured, "Bills are racking up over here, Major. There's a reason, you pull the plug."

Both men watched the colonel go.

Rion gave Wu a sympathetic grin. He'd caught the tail end of that conversation and guessed the rest. They fought their own very different kind of war on the base every day.

"Good looking out, Chief." Wu patted Chief Fontaine on the back and scurried as fast as he could down the ramp and into the shadowy Support Cell. Dozens of officers and enlisted followed right behind him.

No more mistakes. Not now. Not while Mattis was watching.

* * *

Like there were silent alarms that began to go off all over the military complex, warning of possible imminent disaster, men and women flew down hallways with a rehearsed sort of frenzy. They all understood how precious these next few moments were. They needed to do their jobs and everyone needed them to perform. They'd done this for a while now but it was never always the same—too much could go wrong and usually did. They were the support staffs of a dozen units moving a hundred different pieces to a unified end: getting birds in the air.

Outside, the staging area too had lost its heat-swollen lethargy. Men who lazed around in easygoing groups were yanked to their feet, helmets shoved into their uncoordinated arms and made to march on stuttery, scared legs. These were men in dusty, sun-bleached looking fatigues and freshly stitched ones all the same. They were everything from big eyed to resigned drooping ones, and those were incredibly dark and subtly unpredictable but unquestionably done with this war.

Huddled tankers with greasy, bristly faces finished their cigarettes and dumped out their coffees and crawled into their cramped steel holes. The air cavalry regiments based here fired up their squadrons of pelicans and sped through pre-flight checks while men and cargo were muscled deep into their troop bays. Ground fighting vehicles were secured in place and those transport pilots moaned about their growing tonnage, the desperate and hasty overburdening of their machines that wasn't going to let up because the fact was fewer and fewer aircraft were making it back at the end of each day.

When the Covenant first arrived, the IRIS site was the head and the heart of operations, its reach far and undeniable, but that was changing. They were losing their grip, every supply run shot down another deadened vein and a useless flopping limb somewhere out there that threatened to become septic.

So Colonel Mattis would keep the region supplied, keep pumping fresh blood into the exhausted and wavering shield-arm in Mombasa, and keep looking for the big payoff when there very well might never be one. There were four pelicans they'd managed to wrangle away from the rest of the flock, and it was the last one in the group Fraser and Woodrow snuck aboard. She knew someone she spotted in the troop bay, a man himself recovering from a wound but getting outta here regardless, and he told her to come on up with a big grin. She told the soldier she owed him a beer once they got out there.

Woodrow escaped from the recovery ward when Fraser came to grab him in a rush. She told the beleaguered nurse the legless man was bleeding again and the two dashed off when she wasn't looking because Fraser knew the call had gone out—men were shipping out, she'd heard. And they knew just as it happened before (and had somehow become a more prevalent occurrence in the past week) someone would send an officer, a doctor, and a few beefy MPs to recovery to cherry-pick the least bad-off looking guys to throw back into the war and sometimes these men dug in with fingernails and would have to be forced to go, scratching and biting, so the nurse already had that in the back of her mind. Losing track of Woodrow would mean nothing to her right now. They weren't friends or friendly ever and she had probably been wishing they'd hurry up and come and take him out of here anyway because he wasn't even fucking hit, Woodrow had thought.

Down here Woodrow and Fraser were invisible and as good as disappeared already. The dust-choked grounds were filled with people on their way out, mobilizing in such a defeated way. They heard about the Covenant warship that had been taken down and while it was a sight everyone said they enjoyed, they suspected all those stars, bars, and oak leaf-types deep inside the base appreciated the victory much more than the men down here really did. One scrapped vessel didn't mean a day off for them to get liquored up and forget about the war for a while—almost nirvana as far as they cared, true bliss—instead all it amounted to was this greedy window of opportunity to get more bodies to the frontline and back into action quicker. For the men who'd been waiting around for the skies to clear of Covenant, now it was time to grab their shit and get moving once again. It was like a toxic shock to the system and it was only getting harder to do the longer they remained.

When the two, Woodrow and Fraser, had slunk towards their readying transport they watched clean and clean-shaven soldiers without rifles being packed into any empty seats while master sergeants scribbled down service numbers to catalogue later, making them official replacements and not stowaways. The grey-faced men already aboard shifted to give the younger guys space but said nothing to them and didn't offer them any cigarettes. At one point everyone heard a shout and saw a scuffle break out when one frazzled soldier shook his head no fucking way he was going back out he was done; he tossed aside his rifle and began to undo the straps of his gear when a few others from his mortified chalk mobbed him. They had to tear his sidearm from his hands but he wasn't aiming it at anyone except his own hand or foot, whatever he could manage because he was desperate and shaky. They choked him out, dragged him up and strapped him into his seat before the base MPs could make their way over.

The whole thing drew a crowd of hard-looking Marines who laughed at whatever the hell was going on but when they strutted off there wasn't a man who didn't fear the future secretly because they were all going to the same place soon. Out there. East Africa was a large swath of all different kinds of fighting but the Covenant was about the same wherever you went and it made everyone equal that way because they all knew by now it was easy to die or watch someone else die. There were few here who actually wanted to go but mostly everybody sat or stood meekly where they were supposed to and stared at each other with their own helpless looks.

A lieutenant and a crew chief clambered into Woodrow's pelican and this must have been who they were all waiting on because the engines kicked in under their seats immediately and the other three Mombasa-bound pelicans followed suit.

The lieutenant helped the man heave the door gun up onto its pintle mount. As the crew chief screwed it in, the officer bent down and opened up a tin of linked rounds to load it.

"Anything you can to get us out of here fast, really appreciate if you did it now," the lieutenant said to him. "Wu already pulled strings. If all is right, we're highest priority outbound."

"Gift from God," the crew chief said, "days like today."

"Man's a damn treasure, the major. Mission'd be scrapped weeks by now if he hadn't kept pushing for it." The lieutenant eased shut the feed cover and racked the gun. "It'd be good of us to get him some results—by way of a thank you."

As he passed through, the crew chief whose name was Harris knocked on the large supply crates tethered to the floor of the troop bay. "Then this oughtta help. Sate a terrible hunger."

Those crates were fully loaded with weapons and precious ammunition. Another lifeblood that nourished the region.

"We gotta get there first," the lieutenant said.

Harris talked with the pilots briefly while the lieutenant took a seat. He glanced over at the men who surrounded him. Woodrow felt he held his gaze on him longer than the others and it made him nervous, but that was because he didn't belong and felt like everyone knew. But the lieutenant said nothing because it was almost impossible to know. Woodrow comforted himself with the thought that at a glance he wasn't too out of place; the other pelicans were stuffed with replacements the lieutenant couldn't know either, after all.

Outside the hatch, a column of heavy armour lurched by, their commanders' helmeted heads the only visible parts of them, poking up timidly. They picked up speed, bucking through their gearshifts; their antennas jittered and swung back and forth, their holey saddlebags jostled, threatening to burst apart or come loose. One tanker had piled on sandbags and instacrete barriers—the ones they used to line highway medians, he'd just kept them all together with huge looped chains and steel braces—all lashed over the top and frontal armour of his: in theory it was just more material to burn through before the superheated material that flew his way reached and disintegrated the hull and turned the entire thing into a gooey heap. It was wishful and unproven though. His tank looked like it hadn't been directly shot at by Covenant cannons yet because most that did never made it back off the field.

The crew chief returned and gave the lieutenant a thumbs up. "Green."

The lieutenant turned from the creaking column and nodded at Harris. "All right, seal her up."

Woodrow saw only black then murky red as the hatch closed up. The lieutenant, face splotchy with shadows, looked more uneasy than when he looked at him in the light. The whites of his eyes glowed.

There was that weightlessness like falling and sticking to the ground at the same time in his stomach as the pelican broke contact with the airfield, jerkily rising up one side then the other then leveling off. Through the tiny viewport built into the hatch, Woodrow could make out the huge formation of pelicans and vehicles and men still on the ground as they pulled upwards and away, too many to count. A force that big and they weren't going where he was going, and he wondered if that was comforting or unsettling. Fraser beside him crossed and uncrossed her legs and mostly just stared at her lap letting the drone of engine noise and vibrations of turbulent air fill the need for talk of remorse, for any convincing that this was a bad idea. Woodrow too had no idea why he'd let himself be taken by her crazy impulses, but in truth it might have been a very uncomplicated reason why: she, vibrant and adventurous and who there was hardly a dull moment around ever, said no matter what she was going and so, then, what the hell, so was he.

* * *

"Any word yet, sir?"

First Lieutenant Pennington glanced upward to only fleetingly meet the eyes of a man who looked desperate for answers, one of Lima Company's newly-promoted non-commissioned officers. The Lieutenant could surmise in an instant that the junior NCO was eager to dig in somewhere, anywhere, and take action against the invasion. Get a set of orders to follow to whatever end. Likely close quarters combat, the kind that hardcore Marines favored such as Sergeant Ryan Haze. Mombasa: that's where all those birds were flying.

Haze had been tracking them for a few minutes now like they were old friends he'd mistakenly fallen out of reach with or abandoned.

But Captain Lawson's orders were simple as they were clear, and even Lawson was just another link in a chain.

Pennington flicked a half-smoked butt to the ground in his crouched position and said, "Nothing new yet. Awaiting further orders."

Haze scoffed under his breath, about-faced, unsure of where to go, what to do. He could be seen clenching teeth and fists as he scanned the Easterly horizon. Brazenly, he asked, "And what was discussed in your little meeting with them?"

Pennington was cool-headed, wasn't required to even entertain an enlisted man's queries but did so anyway.

"Where to re-assign assets following Red Flag's stand-down, mostly. I wasn't privy to all of it."

"And they're going to continue holding everyone here until they know what to do with us?"

"Aye, for now."

"Excuse my wording, sir, but fuck that. We're able to make decisions in the absence of orders, yes?"

Master Sergeant Rios, Lima Company's First Sergeant, stepped into the middle of the group ready to put Haze back in his place but Pennington saw him and waved him off, refocused on Sergeant Haze. "Captain said wait. So, we wait. That simple."

"Look at that out there, sir." Haze said, pointing as he stepped toward the ledge. "That's where everyone's going and we're needed."

"What would you have us do over there?" The Lieutenant then stood. "Get into some skirmishes? Grease a few Covies? It'd be ineffectual and only get people killed. There was a time when all we did was patrol and fight, but that's not our mission."

"Yeah, Lawson was the one who saw to that."

"Aye, he did. He saw to that, and Kleiner saw to that, and Gunny Smith saw to that, and so did a couple million Zaragosans too. Lima goes after the big fish now."

"Red Flag is over, sir."

"Haze, relent."

"What about this world? This city?" Again, he pointed. "There's no way you can see what I see and just look away. Who else remains when they're all gone? Where we gonna run to when Mombasa falls and they don't stop? Haven't we witnessed enough elsewhere? We at least owe it a fly-by, see if it's worth fighting for."

"The unit stationed here has that under control. Again, it's _not_ our mission."

"I think Haze is right." Another NCO in the unit spoke out.

Until this point, all of Lima Company had been silent. A few more troops then gaited closer toward Sergeant Haze, taking their places by his side and wordlessly signaling a statement to their Lieutenant. A moment of this repositioning and it was apparent to Pennington that a clear majority aligned themselves toward the more interventionalist mindset of Sergeant Haze.

Rios himself looked unsure. He faced their way and was about to speak out against the discord, but a junior NCO beat him to the punch.

"There are sensitive UNSC assets out there. ONI field HQ, regional weapons depot, and a lot of supply caches that Covie should not be getting their hands on." He spoke, reading from HUD text. "They already blew up the only space elevator, sir."

In that very instant, the Lieutenant got the message he'd been waiting for—ultimately his saving grace in front of the troops. He held up a hand, withdrawing out of earshot from his unit. His stare turned blank as he listened into a transmission intended solely for him.

"Yes, sir. I'm here. Need orders."

The young officer's neural net was synced with that of his commander's in near-real-time, the transmission originating from some orbital station where the naval Captain had rendezvoused with other higher-ranking officers.

"I've got bad news, Pennington. The strike mission we'd hoped for has not been salvaged and ONI's deep cover asset hasn't reported in for some time. They fear the worst. They've got only occasional signals on the vessel's whereabouts. It's been making random jumps like they know someone's onto them. Until ONI can pin down its location, we're stuck at Earth for the time being."

"Is Lima Company still to be hunkered down out here, sir?"

"No. You're mobilizing the whole unit. The General is tapping whatever manpower and resources he can to help with Lord Hood's counter-offensive."

"Where do you need us to be?"

"Take the Company to the Army hospital in Mombasa."

"Say again? Mombasa?"

"I know—by all rights we belong at the front, but that won't be happening, not for the foreseeable future. My hands are tied on this one. General LeMay sold us all up the river so that he could get his clutches on Nine-Oh-Sixth firepower and reposition them at Voi."

"So, why Mombasa then? What's its significance in this counter-op?"

"LeMay wants that place secured so they can depart with minimal casualty...before the fight gets redirected westward. Voi is shaping up to be the next major battle ground. The Nine-oh-sixth is holding things down out in Mombasa, but probably won't be for much longer. Mattis has sided himself with LeMay because he wants all his people involved in the counter-op as well, I suspect because he feels Mombasa is old news. IRIS will be the rally point. Them getting back to your current location is the challenge."

"They in bad shape?"

"Hard to say myself, but it's a dug-in battalion so already I know that them readying themselves for an all-out evac will take considerable time. You need to hasten that withdrawal."

"How do we assist?"

"Get yourselves there for starters, and find Lieutenant Colonel Watson. Inform him Mattis is going to pull the entire unit out of there. Watson will figure out how to do the rest."

"Why doesn't the general tell them himself? Is he not in their chain of command?"

"He's not, but Mattis already agreed in a roundabout sort of way. Regardless, this is an invasion. The general gets discretion. And though I'd love nothing more than to see a general negotiate directly with the people stationed in Mombasa, there was an in-air slipspace jump from an enemy ship a little while ago. Knocked out all their long-range comms so they are effectively blind out there. Wouldn't be prudent to go behind the colonel's back in any case."

"Understood, sir."

"Bottom line is they need to fallback to IRIS HQ so they can stage enough forces to help strike back. The city will have to fall. Don't let anyone else know about this. Tell only Watson of the plan. I'm sure you'll understand why in due time."

"Aye-aye, sir."

"Pennington, my greatest concern is the readiness of Lima Company and our weapon. If the original mission should get re-authorization, we're outta here. And I mean with haste. I don't want you or Spartan Zero-Seven-One exposed to any unnecessary hostilities."

"And the company?"

"They are yours to command, as I've said, but do ensure your unit is in fighting shape should we resume."

"I understand, sir."

"I'm having Hood call in a wing of Longswords to pave your way over there. I'm not taking any chances. In general, Lima Company should take on an advisory role with limited assistance to Watson."

"This was supposed to be a favor for a favor, right? Advise and assist is a hard bargain to sell to a commander in the middle of a war zone."

"I predicted this much. That's one of the reasons you're now promoted to Captain."

"I know I should be honored by your decision, but is extra rank prerequisite going in there?"

"It's not that I don't think people would follow you. It's that I don't want people looking down on you. You may very well be heading into a snake pit. I know about Seventh Army, how they operate. They've been known to throw their weight around, especially on their own turf. Their MO is to spearhead and commandeer anyone and anything. That cannot happen to Lima Company. And if anyone takes issue with that, tell them to take it up with General LeMay. That should shut 'em down."

"You can count on us to be ready when the time comes."

"Good. I'll be aboard Cairo station with the General and Lord Hood until it's our time. Just so you know, I would've made you Captain earlier, but taking baby steps was better for the unit. Good luck, Pennington. Lawson, out."

A moment later and the newly-promoted Captain reconvened on the unit's position at the center of the rooftop.

He drew in closer, saying, "That was Lawson."

That gained everyone's attention.

He paused a moment, the look on his face indiscernible but clearly something that signaled a small bout of preponderance on his part. The unlikeliest of outcomes had just transpired for them all, and now he had to choose his words carefully.

He kept it simple.

"We're going into Mombasa." He said. "Prepare for combat."

There was no hesitation. The Marines of Lima Company enacted their pre-battle inspections upon Pennington's command. The troops were completely silent as they readied their equipment, though a wordless understanding permeated throughout the unit as they prepared, the many faces glancing over one another with telling eyes that outshined from even the steadiest among them. Ever since they fled their homeworld in defeat, there was not one of them that didn't harbor at least a small twinge of spite or rage after everything they'd lost, and the only thing that could rectify this was revenge—maybe even the kind of revenge that's never truly satiated. Minutes later, all of Lima Company had discarded any containing equipment they arrived with, the contents within either donned by them or hoisted in their arms. Captain Pennington gave a cursory glance at the lot of them as his insignia emitter auto-updated itself to a set of chromed double-bars.

"Fall out."

The Marines double-timed toward the levels below, making their way to a squadron of Pelican transports lying in wait outside.

"Sergeant Haze," Pennington beckoned, "a word with you."

The NCO broke off from the group just as the last of them began the descent into the steep, shadowed slope.

"Sir, Sergeant Haze reporting as ordered, sir."

"There's a bit of a snag that Lima needs to address before heading out there. I need a steady NCO on it."

"Anything for the Company, sir. And congrats on the promotion."

"Look, Sergeant Blunt isn't needed or wanted in the combat zone. I'm sure everyone would agree."

"I sure as hell wouldn't trust him to watch my back."

"And I can think of no better man to take charge of him than you."

"Wait, you're pulling me out of this op?"

"Not just you, of course. You won't be alone. Select two members of your squad as escort."

"I can't believe what you're saying. You know how much I need this."

"But I need you here. Not just for Blunt, you see. Comm relays out at Mombasa are down. If they get fixed, I need a relay man here to liaise between me and the Nine-oh-sixth team. I can't be everywhere at once, so I need you to be Lima's messenger. I'm not keen on crossing lines of communication with these Army officers given the sensitivity of our own mission. And you'll be our eyes and ears on this side of the map too. It'll be every bit as important, you know. We may very well need you in a pinch."

"Fine, sir. I'll be the babysitter."

"Good. If it's any consolation, I don't foresee our foray into Mombasa lasting all that long, either, so don't get too comfy."

Haze saw the Captain off as he jogged down the ramp.

Over the shoulder, he shouted, "Do us proud, Sergeant!"

"Fuck me, now I'll never score any kills."

* * *

Woodrow and the Mombasa-bound formation flew for about thirty minutes and those inside the troop bay didn't know where they were on the map when they were attacked. Plasma fire strafed the blood trays before the pilots reported they were under fire, like a sniper shot that slyly beat the sluggish noise to its destination.

Inside the pelican, the floor blistered and blew inward and the rounds went where they would—nobody moved but to flinch in panic because where they were, in what they were in, there was nowhere to hide and get out of the way. The air seemed to lose all of its oxygen. Steam vapours burned their skin and Woodrow's mouth became instantly dry.

Below his feet the pelican pitched, taking evasive action but there was only so much manoeuvrability in an aircraft like that, and even less so given the range it had been engaged at—shots fired from at least a kilometre away. The second burst finally got someone across from Woodrow a few seats down. The enemy fire was from an anti-aircraft gun nestled somewhere below that couldn't be seen until it lit up the sky, and the size of the shot that punched through the floor made it so it was not impeded at all by the transport's armour when it killed the man suddenly and everyone knew he had been killed although they couldn't see much. They smelled it mostly but everyone just sort of understood, even those who hadn't even seen combat or ever seen somebody die.

Nobody screamed or anything but froze in their seats, mouths open, the dangerous numbness coming sooner than it would have if they were somewhere they could run away and hide, feeling the safety of ground they'd press themselves to so they wouldn't be shot at. With that little bit of power stripped away, strapped in and dead in the firing line, there was nothing to do but shut down.

It was after another unpredictable volley started a fire in the overhead stowage netting did the lieutenant scramble to action, leaping from his seat and putting it out with a nearby extinguisher. The compartment became hazy with ash, painful to breathe until two soldiers pounded on the cockpit door and yelled for the pilots to pop the hatch. There was a hiss, then liberating sunlight. Fresh air rushed into the bay, stoking embers and creating a swirling cloud that trailed behind the pelican as it continued forward.

Woodrow's vision came back, blinded for a second, and he came back to the sight of crumbling, misshapen Old Mombasa rushing past below. It stretched to the coast and in one blink Woodrow took in its crooked city streets and garbage-filled alleyways, its rooftops with sagging clotheslines, highways of burnt cars, whole buildings smashed by artillery fire with wreckage that lay in outward circles almost neatly around those points of impact—three weeks of skirmishes, airstrikes and shelling in a city that hadn't yet been fully evacuated (and possibly couldn't be)—and then in the distance flickering bluish light where the shots were coming from. Two positions at least, their shrill, crackly rounds chasing the convoy doggedly.

The crew chief had gotten on the door gun and was spraying return fire but it was hard to say that it was all that helpful. They were a much bigger target than the concealed Covenant soldiers shooting at them. All Harris was doing was making noise, replying to the Covenant question with the UNSC's fifty-cal solution but that was about it. The staunch thumping noise though was comforting in its own way, resist resist resist.

Then the pelican following them went down. In Woodrow's view out of the open rear, flames and fizzling white-hot fragments exploded from the damaged pelican's troop compartment after it got hit, then came inky dark smoke, and after floating serenely a moment, gravity took hold and it went into a shallow, veering off-course dive below Woodrow's pelican and out of his sight. They all heard the crash and saw what had happened later as they rushed over the path it took: through the top floor of an apartment building then into a row of storefronts in the street leaving a stream of rubble and broken glass. The twisted up, seam-split pelican itself was a burning cage. There was no suggestion of stopping to check for and go back for survivors from anyone and they all quietly hoped nobody would speak up and say it, or worse, convince the lieutenant to do it. Now especially it seemed foolhardy to even think about turning back.

The lieutenant whirled around, contemplating something, a rescue maybe but something else too. Whatever it was Woodrow could tell it was a tough fifty-fifty for something awful, the way he stared, and a nearby thunk of a glancing shot off the hatch that made him duck and retreat seemed to hurry him in making this excruciating decision: he pointed at the supply crates and shouted, "Toss 'em!"

There was no movement or seemingly almost no understanding of what he'd just said until he withdrew a Helljumper knife he had somewhere on him and began to saw at the criss-crossed tethers keeping the crates stuck in place. "Come on!"

He looked directly at Woodrow and that was enough to get him on his feet. He began to unhook the straps from the D-rings recessed into the floors, as did others. They all looked so conflicted like the lieutenant did just before, especially those who weren't new at this, who knew what they were being asked to throw away, stuff worth killing for and to actually risk dying for. But one lucky shot on the Covenant's part and it'd cook the entire troop bay, critical aircraft components, maybe the pilots too depending on what it was they were carrying. So they let them go, pushing them out off the ramp where they tumbled to the streets and the roofs one after the other. Not wanting to suffer the same fate, the men in the other pelicans began following suit, dumping their cargo loads as the lieutenant watched at the end of the ramp, looking like he was witnessing a belaboured death before him but that wasn't inaccurate. From what Woodrow overheard earlier, this was a vital supply mission. They were failing.

One crate landed, tumbled off a ledge and spilled open but it was too far away to see what had been inside. They could only wonder and imagine and feel each dropped one come to a halt messily like unrelenting body blows. Plasma tracers still hunted them, rifling past the hatch and the man standing there.

The lieutenant squinted into the daylight, and they all heard it at the same time, the otherworldly alien wails so sharp they got underneath the engine noise without overpowering it. He'd seen two black spots in the bright sky bearing on them, gaining on them. These things opened up as well and their fire took whole chunks out of the formation.

Woodrow and the others got low but it wouldn't help, just like taking anti-aircraft fire from the ground. The Covenant fliers, Banshees, would run them down because they had hotrod speed and maneuverability the pelican was not designed for, and rip them apart aft to fore in one pass from above or below or maybe both. The fleeing pelicans were already in bad shape, all of them shredded, and at least one of them with a bum engine that was hacking smoke and dying. The Banshees would close within a minute, and thanks to the marvel of Covenant engineering, one was more than enough to obliterate the entire limping group with its deadly speed and rapidfire autocannons. Two of the fliers was sure death—the way things were going—there only to ensure there were no survivors once the pelicans were forced to the ground and that's when the fuel rod guns came unleashed.

The lieutenant yanked his rifle from the overhead stowage. Into his radio he asked the pilots to reduce altitude, get them low. They started to do so, and the ground rushed up towards them while they swooped. The crew chief Harris looked over from behind the fifty, hanging on tight as not to fly out of the shaking, rattling aircraft, and bleakly asked what they were going to do. The lieutenant with his Helljumper knife and rifle who faced down two Covenant death machines that might vaporize him in thirty seconds told the man equally bleakly: "Jump."

II

The Banshees would have killed him and all the others if they had existed a few seconds longer. Missiles streaked at them passing narrowly over Woodrow's pelican and met the two alien fliers, outright destroying one and wounding the other farther away. It was still in a frantic, fiery roll when they violently pulled it apart with their autocannons—the two Hornets that roared past the pelican's rear hatch on the attack. Once satisfied the falling enemy aircraft were as good as scrap, they waved off and came back alongside the Pelicans in escort formation. They were out of range of Covenant ground fire now and together they climbed with new confidence.

The lieutenant dropped down into his seat with a crooked, disbelieving smile that he immediately stuffed a cigarette into the corner of and lit up. He offered the rest of the pack to those closest to him, Harris who slumped over the door gun and wheezed a breathless "god damn," and to the soldiers he didn't know including Woodrow. All of them—even the non-smokers—needed the nicotine hit and took them from him gratefully.

"Days like today," the lieutenant said to Harris, "I am thankful as all hell Tenth Air-Cav is part of the brigade now."

"Nine-oh-six sure seems to be where the party's at. You're welcome, on their behalf."

The lieutenant regarded the rest of the troops around him, their tense faces. It could have gone worse, a situation just like that. They kept cool. It was unsaid too but they were still alive for now—it might be worth learning their names finally. He looked them each in the eye and said, "I'm Reed. Dog Company, Second Platoon. Welcome to Mombasa, animals."

Later, the brawlers and the beaten-up haulers descended into designated landing zones on top of a very wide, stout building: the hospital Fraser had told Woodrow about. Sandbags and riveted sheet metal had been laid down to create vague parapets and firing ports on the ledges. Barely adequate cover from snipers that snuck around the city. A painted sign read: "Don't feed the animals—heads and hands inside the bus!"

Shirtless soldiers manning heavy machine-guns pointed at the street below couldn't take their eyes off the aircraft that were miraculously still flying. Woodrow could barely believe it himself—he hopped off with everyone else and noticed just how shot up every pelican had been. Their pilots walked around them only in a brief prowl because no way would they be taking them out again without extensive repairs—their armour plating replaced or failing that patched up with spot-weld beads that were good enough. The man who died aboard Woodrow's pelican was lifted out on a stretcher, his torn upper body covered up with someone's jacket. In the light it was easier to see how far his blood and bone had gone when he got hit. It pooled all over the blood tray below where he'd sat and dripped out of the big holes burned into the floor; it had splattered Woodrow and Fraser. Their pelican had been luckier than the other two transports—still-warm bodies came out of one in limp piles, dragged out and laid down in body-bagged rows, then from both a few wounded that needed to be rushed to surgeons downstairs, all worse than anything suffered in Woodrow's pelican comparatively—numberswise.

Other than that, those pelicans were empty. Well, not all. Somebody made a call on one to save a supply crate or two, probably the least hazardous of ordnance. Food maybe, or water, but even that was dangerous if Covie plasma boiled it, flash-steaming everyone like Mumma's old pressure cooker. It was a gamble to keep flying loaded up like that and Reed wasn't convinced he made the wrong choice. They all took Covie fire just the same, and despite the supply predicament out here it was preferable to getting a face full of fire and shrapnel in an enclosed space. If you decided to run it, you made it or you died. Still though, in a better world he would have liked to have half of those casualties—acceptable, not ideal—and all of their cargo. Two boxes of anything was a better count than Reed's who had nothing to show for all that trouble except more mouths to feed, more hands to expend ammo they were already running low on.

On the roof already waiting for the arrivals were—he was surprised to see—officers Captain Stern and Major Montclair, Watson's number two. Stern was unexpected, but Montclair he needed to explain himself to about what went wrong. Just like Wu, he had let her down. The whole battalion, too. But he was alive and there was nothing else to do but try again soon.

For now he approached the two officers and asked, "Who do I owe a cold one?" He motioned to the two Hornets that were parked nearby. "If I had one to give."

"All Stern," Montclair said. "Scout platoon out of Shield spotted trouble twenty klicks out. Sent word back as quick as they could. Tenth Air was snoozing. Stern near threw 'em off the roof."

Reed shook Stern's hand. "Appreciate it, sir."

"You do owe me, Lieutenant, but I'm a simple man to please. Company could use some new toys to play with—before the rest of the battalion, yes?" Stern said. He looked around for the haul Reed was supposed to be bringing back. He frowned when he didn't see men unloading things like they were supposed to.

"Need to talk to you both about that," Reed said. "Way here we had to dump the ammo and explosives. I made the call, I'll take the lashes. And sorry for the bad news."

And it was a dreadful thing to hear. Be that as it may, the major still had that spark of hope in her eyes when she asked, "Comms gear? We're desperate to get some flight requests out to IRIS, clear out all these civilians. Not to mention we need to clear out our reporting backlog."

"If there was any such equipment along for the ride, I'm afraid it would've suffered the same fate."

Montclair's mouth tightened and Stern said nothing, but they were no strangers to catastrophe. Another day, another mountain. It didn't make it less troubling news though, this late in the evening of a long winter day that only got darker.

Reed continued, "Route in's getting more and more crowded. It's been a problem a while now, only getting harder and harder every day. Do believe Covie is onto us."

Montclair looked at her watch and said, "I'll believe it was hectic up there. Lay it on me, Lieutenant. Watson is waiting on my report."

Stern said, "How about bodies, Reed? Any of these boys worthy of a home with me?"

"There's a manifest somewhere. We got 'em logged, combat records and all. If you want to hold auditions I won't stop you, sir. Might say you earned it, in my book."

"That I get the approval of almighty Reed pleases me oh so fuckin' greatly."

Reed looked over the dazed soldiers who hung around weaponless and patchless, waiting for assignment.

The returning 906th men had already shuffled off to find their buddies and platoons. They were men and women who had gotten hit early on and missed out when 1st Battalion had redeployed to the hospital. Not wanting to be sent elsewhere, attached to the other battalions or god forbid another division entirely, they found their way back to their own people. Sometimes, all it took to undergo a forced reassignment back at IRIS was for some iron-chested O-4 to storm into a ward and start pointing fingers at patients fully healed and they were escorted outside into a waiting troop transport to be hauled away to some other front. That happened to the youngest troops—the ones who didn't know any better. If you were seasoned or at least a good couple years into UNSC service, you could look that major dead in the eye and staunchly say something like _no sir, my unit's waiting on me. Find someone else._ And that would at least buy you some time, let you saddle back up with your own unit again before the eleventh hour.

It was good to see the patch on people he recognized only kind of but who were nine-oh-six just the same, but they were undoubtedly still recovering from some kind of injury: burns that weren't too severe plus the skin grafts that sometimes came with them (they arrived with bandages that did all the work to hold together their slimy skin that might slip off at any time), or ricocheted spiker rounds that hadn't fully penetrated their ballistic vests but they caught the tip of, like knife wounds. Arms in slings, rolled ankles, torn ligaments. They were all heavily medicated. This would be an issue in the coming days. Reed didn't have to see the future to know this. The army doctors would keep men breathing here but they lacked the variety of happy-good-time drugs found back at the IRIS site where they were supposed to be shipped for the months of recovery their injuries warranted. Nothing was turning out the way it was supposed to.

Montclair studied a map while Reed did his best to explain the sequence of events based on landmarks he remembered. How far out were they when they first got hit? Where, when the man in Delta One-One... Tomlin... was killed? When One-Three bought it? What happened there? It'll take too long to query the flight data recorders, so spit it out. Well to the best of my recollection, ma'am...

Meanwhile, Stern spoke to the newcomers in his way—always personable and fatherly—full of advice and encouragement and asking them how they were holding up after all that. Terrible ride, boys, he said. Scary, right? You did fine, you came back all right dincha? Good man. You too, all of you. I know your unit, son—they're out there somewhere, we'll get 'em back. Guaranteed. Say, where're you from? I know it well. Why'd you sign up? What about you? And you? Hell of an answer, soldier. Hell of a fuckin' answer—that's what I like to hear. You know, I could use a man like you in my company...

Stern's company, Shield (really Company A of 1st Battalion but nicknamed Shield during training and was called so ever since, even by 906th heads), distinguished itself through its actions first during war-games and demonstrations, then later on in its first real combat against the Covenant. The name carried clout with those outside the brigade along with those in it, who would jump at the chance to be folded—out of desperation—into the battered, burdened Shield at its hour of need to pull through amazingly, heroically they hoped. Un-killable Shield...that was the good word that went around.

The captain got to Woodrow, shook his hand, and said, "I see a unit patch, Corporal. You've been in the fight a bit if I'm not mistaken."

"Yessir I have."

"Infantry in Beletzkov."

"That's exactly it."

"No-prisoners-taken Covie grudgematch, if I'm correct."

"Not too different from here, I've been told. Hell of a lot colder though."

"Well I'm sorry for what you suffered. But you got through it. Says something about you."

"All good things I hope."

Stern showed his coffee-stained teeth. "Man makes the unit, unit makes the man. Chicken 'n egg sort of thing, don't think they solved that one yet. Both important, is my point. How'd you like to come fight under me, fight for Shield Company."

"I think that'd be swell, Captain. Provided—"

"—Woodrow, tell you what, I'll give your name to the Major and she'll make sure your paperwork is in order. Shouldn't be a thing."

"Only fair I let you know..."

"What is it?"

"I'm not on any list," Woodrow admitted. "Jumped aboard straight out of recovery. I don't think they know I'm gone."

"Well alright. Doesn't bother me. That's somebody else's problem to worry about. If my boys never returned to the fight I'd be all out of good men. They crawl on their bellies if they got to, to get back to the comp'ny."

"There's a soldier here I'd like to stick with, if that's all right. One of you. Got me here in the first place, and it'd be good to have a friend to watch my back. If not here, I'll prefer to go there, wherever that might be."

"Fine, fine, Corporal. I hear what you're saying. I can always take on another good man. Where's he at? What's his name?"

 _"Her_ name. Private Fraser, sir."

Stern crossed his arms and gave Woodrow a drawn-out, overly sour look that puzzled the Corporal. His eyes aimed themselves at Woodrow's like they were a couple of parallel bullets shot out at him, and he asked, "Where'd you meet her? IRIS?"

"Yeah, in recovery. I was...wounded, sir. Some time ago."

"You say she's here with the battalion? Now?"

"Yes sir, flew in with me." Woodrow nodded in her direction.

Fraser had been milling behind the group of replacements, half-hiding, her cap tugged over her eyes. She hadn't left with the other already sworn-in, wounded 906th men because Stern had personally greeted them back home as they trudged towards the door off the roof. Like Reed, he liked to see familiar faces (or at least the old patch of a quality soldier, a battle-tested soldier). Fraser, though, had not wanted to see him.

Stern, upon spotting the woman, abandoned Woodrow entirely and moved in on her, pushing past the other replacements he hadn't got to yet. She was already in a defensive position, hands protecting herself. He said to her, "You are one stupid bitch."

"Hello Captain. Small world."

"Don't get comfortable. I'm going to have the lieutenant mail you back and make Brigade H&S pay for postage. Have it read 'RTS: this _fuckup_ isn't ours.'"

"If you've another bird capable of getting in the air simply lying around somewhere, please, materialize it. Wow me. I'd love to see it."

"You stick around, I am gonna bury you."

Fraser grinned. "Put me up in Shield again. That'll do it quick."

"You shut your mouth."

"Or you can hit me, Daddy," she cooed. "We'll call it even."

With the commotion of crescendoing voices, a circle of men gathered with curious smirks. Montclair stormed over. Her eyes popped from her bony, dark-skinned face and her voice became rough and croaky when she barked, "Captain!"

Stern tensed up and even cool-hand Reed followed her gaze, noticed Fraser for the first time there. He forced back a chuckle. He hadn't forgotten her. The scene wasn't so different than the one she made before she left—forced out by Stern. He'd get a word in with her, catch up a little before she was inevitably locked up.

Montclair stared Fraser down. She knew her like Stern did. Scornfully and with no subtle amount of suspicion, the major asked, "They sent you here, Fraser?"

The question was so simple, yet loaded. The major was testing her, seeing if she'd lie because—dammit—everyone already knew the answer. With the major here, now Fraser looked humiliated. It was like she'd disappointed someone she thought was alright by her. That made it somehow worse. Most everybody liked Montclair. Fraser lowered and shook her head. "Snuck in, ma'am."

"I see. If you were First Battalion, I'd let it slide. But you're not."

Now Woodrow, who was confused before, was completely thrown. He should have seen it coming, he found himself thinking later, but in that moment he suddenly felt the whole thing was some crazy mistake. He'd been seduced in a way by the idea of her, and now there were untruths being uncovered. She said she was Nine-oh-six and clearly she was, but what she hadn't told him was her unit here in Mombasa wasn't really her unit anymore for reasons she had kept to herself. He hadn't known enough about the Brigade to ask for specifics, not wanting to doubt her—too good to be true Doll Fraser.

A damned liar, but Christ did she always make things interesting.

"Second Battalion's deploying to retake Voi soon, if I'm not mistaken," Montclair continued, "and you should be with them."

"I was hit on the line, ma'am."

"You're well enough now I see."

Fraser had nothing to say to that. She wasn't sure if she wanted for any kind of sympathy but she sure didn't get any.

Montclair looked at Reed, who was doing a lousy job of trying to stifle an ear-to-ear grin, then she looked at the Pelicans just behind them. They looked somehow sorrier now than before. The memory of the harrowing flight collectively forgotten, she said, "But I think you're stuck with us for the time being."

Stern looked ready to protest but he didn't. Not over a fuckup like Fraser. He was smart around Montclair, and Montclair didn't hate him yet nor his methods either. Stern performed. Stern got results. Stern did the 906th proud. Stern did what he did so she didn't have to. She knew the rest of the battalion should be thanking the man for what he put his unit through every combat mission so that the other companies came out of the shit in better condition than what had been expected or what was acceptable—which was, in many cases, nothing short of decimation.

But she hadn't been with 1st Battalion since the inception of 906th Brigade in 2549. Neither had she been with them through the jungleworld Cassandra and the talked-about history there, their first large-scale engagement. She came in soon after that—when another major before her sustained injuries that precluded him from joining the frontlines. Montclair came in to fill a role and watched carefully, listened to her subordinates who did know more, who had more history than her, and eventually won them over. She had her own judgments, one being that Stern was a good officer. The battalion could use another like him, but no more than that. And they should have no more power than a captain, period. That was her analysis. She didn't know where those beliefs put her in the order of things or if the men under her found that out they'd think of her differently. Everyone had their own opinions. When it came to her opinions and the opinions of officers in general, everything was politicized and she knew it.

In this matter though, she was at least there the first time when Fraser had been disciplined and ultimately transferred out of her unit for boozing too hard and clocking Stern in the mouth sometime between the 906th's second deployment after Cassandra, the five-month long slugfest Aurelia, and their arrival to Earth. It was Montclair's idea and Stern played along and agreed with the decision because 2nd Battalion, while still 906th, was a different breed from them and hardly fought in the same trench as them. Neither seen nor heard, she had been exiled. They'd washed their hands of her then. The matter should have been put to bed with that.

But in this particular instance, Montclair said to Fraser, "You're only here because we can't get rid of you. You better believe that. It's up to Captain Stern what happens to you now."

Stern would take this one—graciously, mind you—and took a quiet pleasure in it. He nodded his thanks to the Major. "She isn't coming back to Shield, ma'am. No way in hell. If she's abandoned her team, in their time of greatest need no less, then clearly she hasn't changed her ways."

Montclair said to Fraser, "Then that's the end of it. We'll find somewhere else to put you."

Woodrow caught up to Stern who started to march away with an annoyed scowl. He said, "Captain Stern? Looks like I'll be needing a unit, sir."

Stern looked him up and down but his dangerous association with Fraser had already damned him. Either she'll come with him or he'll go to her, all right. To the major, he said, "Wherever Fraser's going—and I'm confident it'll be the goddamn chain-gang—take this sumbitch with'er."

Fraser, unable to shut her damned mouth, said, "Disciplinary? What the bloody hell for?!"

Stern barked, "You're supposed to be halfway to Voi!"

"You can't punish me. I committed no crimes against any of you."

"I am a commissioned UNSC officer. It is morally-incumbent upon me that I _do_ punish you knowing full-well what you've done to your own people by coming out here. And you—" He pointed at Woodrow. "—God knows where you're supposed to be, but it's probably not here. So, technically neither of you are where you're supposed to be in a time of war. You dumb shits just made yourselves deserters."

Fraser and Woodrow shared a solid glance with each other—one that was sheepish, guilt-ridden, irritated, but also amused at the entire thing, that they might laugh if one broke first, all of this at once from both of them. They couldn't help it. Woodrow looked at the lieutenant, Reed, for help but all the man could give him was an apologetic grimace. The captain and the major thundered away with their heavy, angry strides. As Reed marshalled the newcomers who all claimed Stern wanted them in Shield, Fraser leaned over and said to him, "I didn't think I'd be seeing you today, Lieutenant. Dog Company? Second Platoon?" She said the words like she was gagging on them. "They made you their milkman, did they?"

"Never call me that. And it's good to see you too, Doll."

* * *

Montclair met with the commander of 1st Battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Watson, in his makeshift office he'd been given in the basement of the hospital. He was a husky, greying man, white with a kempt white beard that ended above his throat. He had a good record, having been with the unit since the start, batting two and oh so far. Mombasa might change things, of course, but Watson had made no blunders on his part every time they saw action. So he was competent and in Colonel Mattis' good graces like Stern was. With a gung-ho company commander like that nearby Watson hadn't been the one sending men and women up and over the top with their bayonets fixed—he and Montclair kept their hands clean. He got the benefit of coming off as cool-headed and tactically sensible, only giving the green-light to Stern's flights of fancy when he knew the way the deck was stacked and then they'd both come off for the better because of it.

But here, three weeks in, Watson had done his job the way he was supposed to. It was a barely coherent mission from the start that sounded straightforward: evacuate Mombasa.

Only once you got to the damn place did you realize how daunting of a task it really was. Of Marines, ODSTs, and Army units deployed in the opening days of the invasion, there were people still here ranging from single, scattered troopers whose units left them behind, to entire battalions that'd been routed, trapped in rapidly closing pockets when the Covenant drove through initially. They were somewhere in the city and every day Watson sent patrols out into the red zones to establish contact with them again—coordinate a defence if they could. This was a secondary objective because civilians came first: refugees who trickled in every so often or were found by the patrols and brought back to be saved. There was a growing population of them still in the hospital and it was beginning to grate on the battalion of soldiers so that was another thing Watson needed to contend with. Montclair just made sure he wouldn't have to worry too much about the goings-on in the various companies under her.

But right now, she had nothing good to tell him. She cleared her throat and said, "News from HQ. You're not going to like it."

"Anything to do with today's incident?" Watson asked.

"I can't say for certain, sir. Awfully fishy, though."

"What is it?"

"Drone dispatch from IRIS. Order came down grounding all planes to and from the hospital."

Watson rested his chin on interlocked fingers. "That's not too good for us, is it?"

"It is not."

"Is Mattis hanging us out to dry?" Watson was blunt, but it was a possibility he and Montclair had discussed for a while now and it was an explanation that made sense, sadly.

Montclair scanned her notes. "They say it's temporary. Just until the air-corridor can be properly maintained and defended again."

"No timeline on when that'll be, I'm guessing."

"They'll keep us posted."

Watson said, "Evacuation without being able to actually leave doesn't seem quite like the way to do things. Not how I would do things, at any rate."

"I did tell them that, sir." She caught herself—corrected more impotently: "I've written a strongly worded letter."

"Good. Because it's something they should know." Watson glanced at a map of the city he had projecting upward from a holo-emitter. The air corridor was marked in red, a line that cut proudly through any immovable obstacle every bit like the epic railways of the once-untamed Old West, or the resourceful and resolute Tokyo Express that was simply indispensable. An asset like that and they were being forced to abandon it... it was a crippling shot. They were already an island. Without it they would lose their ability to keep the troops' morale and fighting spirit at its best.

And—god dammit—Watson remembered now there was a flight scheduled this afternoon to get a group of civilians to the IRIS site. So that was out—although with their pelicans in the shape they were in, he doubted they would have gone forward with it anyway. Another promise that had to be broken.

"This place is going to fill up awfully damn quick," he said.

"Problem is, they cannot get aircraft from the IRIS site to the city. They just can't get to us," Montclair said.

"Or, the problem is they don't want to," Watson said. "Look, front's shifting. I know that. Mombasa doesn't mean much in the long run, anymore. Covenant's fascination with us is long over and the UNSC's chasin' em to somewhere. Only reason they're still here is they want to kill us all with extreme prejudice. Grand scheme of things, that doesn't really mean all too much, just that however many of them left will be movin' in slower. CENTCOM priorities will focus elsewhere and we'll fade away. Maybe already we have. We're Mattis' investment—he can cash out any time he wants if that's what's best. It's looking like he'll do so at a loss, though, so maybe that's what's been keeping us alive all this time—he'd wanted to ride it out. When you look at it... there are solutions, there are always solutions. Just need to want to carry 'em out. They could airdrop, set up an LZ somewhere we could get to, meet them halfway, if they really wanted. But they don't by now. And if I were anywhere but here I might feel the same."

"That's disheartening to hear, sir."

"Hell, that's war," Watson said with a withered smile.

There was a knock on Watson's doorframe and the soldiers turned. A woman in a dark, businesslike skirt and jacket stepped through the threshold. This was Dr. Lea Faroush: leaving middle-age, brown haired, brown eyed, and with a just barely contained fierceness about her physique that was hardly tempered by her calm demeanor. Despite being in a warzone she always looked put together. The doctor was the administrator of this hospital, Abigail Aki Memorial (the soldiers took to calling it the Abby over the radio), and to her credit she had stayed on along with her entire staff even though she had every right to pick up and run like everyone else did three weeks ago. But all of her colleagues would testify gun to their heads she was nothing if not stubborn and she'd probably die for this place if she felt she had to. She had a history here. Built her ward proudly like the place and all its own history were hers well.

She said, "I'm interrupting."

"Not at all," Watson said. They'd had a sit down scheduled for a few days now, and they met every so often to go over issues Watson could maybe take care of (or issues the doctor could, conversely). He didn't look forward to this meeting, but it had to be done. The battalion had taken over the hospital, it was only fair they made living arrangements work. To Montclair he said, "If there's nothing else, Major."

"That's it. I'll get a reply sent out to Wu. We'll see if he can't make any forward progress on his end."

"You do that. Thank you, Major."

"Sir." Montclair saluted and left. Faroush took a seat across from the lieutenant colonel.

"How are you, Colonel?" she said.

"I've got bad news for you, so not all that great," Watson said. "I can't move your people out just yet. I apologize. Sincerely."

Faroush kept composed, but her frown said everything. As the voice for the civilians in the hospital, it made her look weak when she didn't get her way. The military was always secretive, doing things that benefited them first and foremost. The needs of the mission always dictated, that was their shield against outside scrutiny. Justifiable, but to a damned extent. While most civilians assumed the military machine took what it needed for their mutual protection, Faroush didn't like the feeling of even being unintentionally stepped on, disregarded like the oncoming driver that couldn't keep a straight line and forced you off the road. She had obligations of the most extreme sort. This was her hospital, her place of safety and sanctuary before they rolled in and decided this is where they'd set up, and the Army men needed to know that. It was fine for refugees to take the lifeboat away. All the better. But for those here, it would only get worse if they either didn't or couldn't flee. She had that gut feeling. She said, "There were forty names on that list, Colonel."

"And now there are forty people to feed and house instead of forty less. It isn't ideal, I know."

"The wards are becoming very cramped," Faroush said. "More people means more problems."

"Can't be helped, unfortunately. There was an incident today."

"I've been informed. Your wounded have been stabilized. They'll all make it."

"You've got my thanks, Doctor," Watson said, "truly. I wish I could return the favour but it's become clear we can't sustain the air route out of here any longer. The order didn't come from me, I can assure you, but all flights are suspended for the time being."

"Including military ones?"

"All flights. You can go ahead and chance it if you'd like, but I'm not too keen on losing a few birds and bees. And I don't think those aboard would be too keen on dying. We'll try again, when we're able."

Now Faroush came out swinging—politely. "A lot of these people were supposed to have left weeks ago, Colonel. Some of my staff...they have families to get back to. And too many refugees who've been here much longer than they should have been are causing their own chaos. They were bumped from flights in favour of your people, or Marines who'd been here less than a day. All this, more than once."

"Action is elsewhere and all over. As much as I'd like to see your people get out safely, the folks calling the shots, making the decisions, they'll always want fighters first. My hands are tied on that one, Doctor. I came here to evacuate Mombasa and I intend to keep doing just that—the admiralty, however, has other plans and we don't figure in them. Having no air-corridor hurts _us_ too."

"I'm sure. Are you working on another plan of evacuation?"

"Weighing our options. We'll just have to see."

"I can't keep these people here like prisoners. I'd appreciate haste, Colonel."

"Always." He drummed his fingers on his desk.

Faroush retrieved a notepad she had tucked inside her jacket and put on a pair of reading glasses. She click-click-clicked a pen and folded her legs. "My staff are feeling overworked. They haven't had any days off since the city was hit. A lot of them were looking forward to spending time outside the city." She paused, as if to ask: what are you going to do about this? How are you going to make this right?

Watson said, "If it'll help I'll tell them the same as I told you. It's a tough situation but we'll just need to make do. It's no one's fault but the Covenant's."

"And with the refugee population growing, we're a bit shorthanded. Those coming into the hospital aren't always in top health. They're malnourished, and need to be monitored. If you can, I'd like some assistance from your medical unit... just to handle the workload." She made it sound like the number of refugees at the hospital was Watson's doing, because he couldn't keep up a steady flow of outbound transportation. It was out of his control, true, but he could at least reconsider priorities. She wasn't wrong, of course, and Watson couldn't help but notice his focus had gradually shifted from the well being of the refugees to his own people as the mission wore on. He couldn't let her know that, though. Now that they were bargaining, as they always did.

"I'll put together a team," Watson promised. "My casualties will be their first priority, but I'll put them to work when it's calm."

"Excellent. Thank you," Faroush said. "Another thing to note: I've noticed food supplies to my people and the refugees being unfairly portioned. There almost isn't enough to go around, but I've seen your mess hall. Always stocked and full of hot food. If I had the means to feed them I would, but we've been running low. We're relying on your supplies."

"Which will be an issue, with the primary—maybe only—route cut off. There are drones that can supplement with modest...very modest deliveries and that idea has been floated. But until we can get some outside aid coming in, I can't say anything more than I need to keep my men fed. A hungry soldier makes for a poor soldier," Watson said.

"Likewise, a hungry doctor is not ideal. We've all got our jobs to do.."

"I can't argue with that. I'll see what can be done."

Faroush moved down her list—Watson could only imagine what else she had to gripe about. She said, "Now, I've also heard complaints from my staff that you've blocked off parts of the building for your people to use at their leisure."

"I wouldn't say at their leisure. If this is happening, I didn't have a say in it. But there must be a reason. This is a military base now, after all."

"Partly," Faroush said through bared teeth. "It's still a civilian hospital mostly and that's precious space we could use. We've crammed all the refugees into a multi-purpose hall and conditions are becoming appalling. Like I said, more people means more problems. They can't be expected to sit around all day while your people can just walk around freely. They're growing agitated. Restless. You don't want a population this size—your soldiers included—growing restless."

Watson, very diplomatically (he was becoming good at this), told her, "I'll look into it." In the early days, when the battalion had just moved in, military and civilians kept to themselves and ignored each other. Troops arrived, refugees departed. They were small enough groups to live separately. But with that number of refugees constantly becoming larger and more unwieldy over the weeks, they could no longer afford to pretend the other didn't exist, especially as transport vectors to the safe zone were increasingly unsafe and less traveled. That was back when ground convoys were still a viable option. So while Montclair dealt with the war outside these days, Watson found himself increasingly stuck wandering the halls, asking for favours of his people, making compromises, cutting deals... all to appease Dr. Faroush. This was his war now. Quite a different one than the one he'd signed up to fight.

He cleared his throat. "What's next?"

* * *

Woodrow and Fraser had been conscripted into hard-labour company, or the disciplinary part of Dog. Instead of rifles they carried shovels and pickaxes. They were men from every other company who were serving some kind of time for offenses like drunkenness usually. They were slackers and misfits who were rowdy and got in fistfights. Fraser fit the bill, but she was never dumped in this outfit. She was kicked right out of the battalion, and that felt more shameful than this. Right now they'd been assigned cleanup detail—scrubbing down the blood trays of the shot up pelicans. With soapy hands they mopped and sponged and their buckets of water turned a blossoming red. They picked up leftover pieces of people and tossed them in a pail, keeping down their vomit although with no great difficulty. They were no strangers to dead bodies.

"I'm annoyed with you, Woody," Fraser said, stooped over, furiously scratching at the ripped up floor with a stiff brush.

"The hell for," he said back. He manned a stained push-mop.

"Putting Stern on me. He would've lost interest in you long before he ever saw me. Those boys won't last a day in Stern's company. I could have slid back in with some of the lads from Charlie because Alley likes me well enough. Nobody'd be the wiser. Instead here I am on my hands and fucking knees."

"You tricked me into coming," Woodrow said. "This isn't your unit. The hell were you expecting?"

Fraser increased her speed and said nothing.

"You didn't want to go to Voi," he said.

"I got shot with Second Battalion. I'm not going back."

"You're scared. And you thought Mombasa would be a safer bet."

"Fuck you, Woody."

"Fuck you right back. You dragged me here. I didn't sign up for this. I shouldn't have to take this."

"Fuck it, it's done. It's done and I can't change that. I didn't foresee this and I certainly didn't drag you anywhere, let's get one thing straight. I convinced you and you came your goddamn self. For what it's worth, that I am sorry for."

"Yeah, alright."

"Maybe they would've left you alone, back at IRIS. Maybe you'd be nice and safe and they'd let you wait this whole thing out. Or maybe they wouldn't. Maybe they'd march you off to Voi so I could get to say I told you so. But it doesn't matter. We need to focus on getting out of here now. Don't know how, but we've got to. We're in a bad way, Woody. If we weren't deployed we'd be scrubbing out bogs. Now that we're out here, they'll make us lay down wire, dig holes, play hopscotch through minefields. We're the real frontline troopers. Patrols will send us out first, then the engineers next. Snipers'll use us for target practice, set us up for bleedin' out so they can lure in another. It's a goddamn death sentence, this."

* * *

Elsewhere in the hospital, Reed caught redheaded, straight-backed Staff Sergeant Erica Lake in a stairwell. She led 1st Squad, 1st Platoon in Shield Company and had since the start. He tossed her a fresh apple he'd nabbed from the mess at the IRIS base.

"Magical old Saint Reed, always bringing me the best presents."

"Naughty or nice, last one you'll get for a while," Reed said. "Hi, Lake."

"Reed," Lake said, smiling. "Hey, you."

They sat on the steps. He supped on steaming, black coffee, she munched on her fruit, savouring its crunch and sweetness.

"You okay? After what happened?" Lake said.

"Wasn't hit so that's a win for me," Reed said. He wiggled his fingers and toes. "Nothing's fell off so far. Not the issue though. I made a call today, and I'm not sure if I was in the right. Wu can't be happy about it, neither. He was counting on me."

"He'll get it. Cross for every officer to bear, the weight of failure."

Reed made a face like she'd pinched him. Lake half-chuckled into her apple.

"Speaking of—Dog Company, huh, Lieutenant? How's that working for you?"

"You know, being an officer ain't all it's cracked up to be. You're still taking orders, and the ones you give make the men hate your guts even though you're just passing words down the line. Death marches, all of them. Even if you win, you feel like you lost."

"Bet you were all grins when they made you lieutenant, though."

"Sure was."

"I'll get a platoon, Reed. Just you wait," Lake said.

Reed nodded but that was all. Lake had changed after Cassandra, their first action as a unit. She'd been under Stern too long, and Reed could swear the brash, single-minded captain was rubbing off on her. Every time she opened her mouth, he couldn't shake the feeling. Like she was slipping away unnoticed, a head of hair through a crowd who never looked back because you gazed upon her once and only once and you will forget each other later this evening. He couldn't bear the thought of looking one time soon and not seeing her be there, even if she was talking to him just like this. But the war raged on and he alone could not stop it. He dreaded the word "eventually." The inevitability that came with it, like it couldn't be resisted or overcome.

Lake scored a promotion after their second deployment to Aurelia, but it was Reed who got a battlefield commission partway through when a lieutenant from Shield got splashed by plasma. He left Shield Recon, his old commando unit (Reed was a Helljumper before this, remember) and became a commissioned officer sworn in by Stern and Montclair, and Lake had been jealous. Well that other man, the wounded lieutenant, came back to Shield after the campaign, and then there was no place for Lieutenant Reed anymore unless he wanted to go to another battalion and join a rifle company there.

Dog Company, however, 1st Battalion's Heavy Weapon and Forward Support unit needed a man to look after supply and acquisitions so that's where he was placed, simple as that. The role hadn't been strenuous or overly demanding during steady-state operations. Lately, they were seeing more enemy aircraft. It made these supply runs riskier. Today had been the worst of days. If he couldn't get the hospital much-needed supplies, what good was he?

"Stern treating you okay?" he asked her.

"He's fine. Patrols go out, patrols come back in. Not much glory in it so Stern's taking it easy. I don't think he's thrilled with the mission."

"Doesn't help that it isn't going too well, either," Reed said. "Stern'd much rather be out west in the thick of things."

"This keeps up, I think I would too. We're wasted out here."

Reed said, "Mombasa hasn't quieted down just yet. Still danger to be found, you look hard enough. You hold onto yourself, Lake. Change is coming."

"Whatever that means. Man, I'm glad you're back."

"Thanks for saying. I think."

"Hell I mean it," Lake said. "There's not a lot of us left who came first. Cassandra wasn't great, and we took Aurelia on the chin—I mean we won that fight but we came out of it with a busted up chin however way you slice it. I'm still worn out from it, for god's sake. Feels like we were just there. And Mombasa's been nothing but a slow bleed. Three weeks now and what do we got to show for it? Just..." She shrugged. "...death."

"What's the number like now, d'you know?"

Lake said, "It feels like it, but today wasn't the worst ever, taking into account action on the ground. Someone calculated. Averages to about 60 casualties a day, 1st Battalion alone."

"We're out of replacements now. If I'm my cynical self, we'll be wiped out in... what's that, 10 days?"

"Ten days." Lake nodded.

"Best we get to not dying, then."

"To better days ahead," Lake said. "Well, not worse ones." She put her eyes to the ceiling. "This level of bumfuck, if it please you, Lord."

Reed reached the gritty dregs of his paper cup and Lake gnawed on her brown apple core, both enjoying the silence the narrow stairwell bestowed.

"Fraser's back," he said.

"I've missed her."

Just then, a man from battalion communications burst through a door on the top landing and shouted down the stairwell, "Lieutenant Reed? You here?"

Reed got to his feet. "That's me. Who's up there yowling?"

"I have a drone delivery from a CWO Fontaine. It's for you."

Reed knew him. They'd spent time together in the IRIS site when the brigade deployed to Earth—God, over a month and a half ago now. But they'd spoken again this morning because he paid a visit to Major Wu and he'd helped get his supply convoy get off the ground. "Pass it over," he said. The comms tech tromped down the steps with the data chit he'd retrieved from the drone's chassis and offered it with an outstretched arm. Reed took it, slid it into his HUD's receptacle.

An audio message, thankfully. Reed always disliked the eye-strain of HUD text.

"Lieutenant, you might want to grab some people and start gearing up. I patched into the satellite feed and picked up movement inside the city not ten klicks from your position. Heavy force."

"There's that happening every day, Chief." Reed murmured to himself.

The recording went on: "You might want to note: they're not a couple blocks from where a pelican went down today. They might be yours. They're holed up well but they're pinned down. They're leaving a trail of bodies and attracting a lot of attention. Covie reinforcements are mobilizing. If you want to get to those people, you'll need to hurry. By the time this reaches you, you'll have to make the call quick."

Reed looked at Lake who hadn't heard anything but gave him an understanding nod. He handed the chit back to the tech for recirculation into the next outgoing drone, and thundered up the stairs on a beeline towards Watson's office.

III

Lieutenant Colonel Watson met with Reed and Montclair, he heard the lieutenant out and then quickly denied him his rescue op. No taking things under consideration or getting back to Reed later, but he said—and this is very important—he wouldn't stand in his way if he was still eager to do it. He'd need men—but there was another provision... only if their company COs allowed them to go. Feeling the pinch already, Reed knew every captain would be stingy with their people. Because if they were given a task by Watson tomorrow, it wouldn't matter that they didn't have enough healthy people to carry out their orders to the battalion commander's satisfaction, that would be on them and no one else—maybe Reed, if he got their soldiers killed. Reed was nothing but a troublemaker to them, and Stern told him as much. Stern, too, was a changed man from Cassandra. But maybe it was because he knew that Watson hadn't ordered it and it was Reed's tiny, unimportant op anyway.

Gung-ho Stern was out, and Sword (Baker) and Charlie Company commanders thought Reed was nothing but a Shield goon out to get their men murdered because he had a reputation—neither did they actually know who was out there fighting for his life, if they were Nine-oh-six or if they were nameless, faceless replacements. Nobodies. There was a comparative worth on human beings, out here. But Dog's CO, Captain Ovarsson, gave Reed free reign and full permission. The gentle, bushy-bearded officer had a record as a combat engineer and Dog was rarely included in frontline manoeuvres, so it occurred to Reed that possibly Ovarsson didn't know what he was getting himself into. Dog had by far, three engagements in, the lowest casualty rate of the battalion. Reed wanted to keep it that way.

But there was another issue: the men in Dog he approached didn't actually want to volunteer. Who was he now? Second Platoon commander, that's all. Not Reed from old Shield Recon, which was some kind of honour to fight and die alongside so they believed. Lieutenant Reed was a supply officer, did shipping and handling. The men in 1st Platoon and even his own goddamn guys said sorry, sir, no thank you. They were regular people, regular soldiers who just wanted to do their jobs and go home and they thanked their gods every night they didn't catch a stray Covie round. They loved their wives and husbands and children, and Reed understood. But he couldn't believe he actually missed Stern's get-up-and-start-walking charm, who could talk a man out of any rotting trench because God was on his side even if he didn't believe in all that.

So that was why Reed ended up on the roof with men from Dog Company's 4th Platoon: the chain gang. Today they cleaned out oil drums with their bare hands, their bare backs slick under the African sun. They lifted construction supplies—sheet metal, timber beams, sacks of instacrete and rolls of razorwire—from one end of the roof to the other; they staggered under heavy ordnance that looked like it could go off suddenly with any sharp knock. To those men, that looked preferable to being slowly crushed under boxes of it for hours and they cast ugly looks at anyone with an officer's insignia. The master sergeant watching over them, McCann, lazed in a lawn chair in the shady cool of a patio umbrella and smoked. He had a loaded rifle leaned up against the arm.

Reed moved through the groups of hard labouring men and women, looking for someone in particular. He found her and Woodrow inside one of the pelicans, soap suds clinging to their faces, their shirts and shins soaked through with bloodied, slurry water. All they had done was make the plated floor slippery—they needed proper tools to really get the job done, a hose and a pressure washer to get rid of the guck. But that wasn't really the point of chain-gang, now, was it?

Seeing Reed at the aft hatch a few feet back, Doll Fraser tossed her sponge into the stained mop bucket and wiped her cheek with the back of her hand. She said, "Don't play around the enclosures, little boy. The animals in here are vicious." She outstretched a hand towards him, dripping fingers curved like claws.

"Fraser, I'm gonna break you outta here. What do you say to that?"

"Good. You distract the sergeant and I'll snap his fat neck."

"But you'll need to return the favour. Like, now."

"Alright, yes, what?"

"There's men trapped in the city, the ones who were shot down today. You saw. I'm going after them."

Fraser was silent. She looked away and said, "Well best of luck to you, Reed. Sounds like fun, it does, but work is... my boss is a real slave driver. I simply can't get away."

Reed said, "I can't do this on my own."

"Let me guess—you've struck out everywhere else. Even with your pal Erica. And she idolizes you, you know. Nobody else is fool enough to say yes to you, have I got that right?"

"You're not wrong, no. But Fraser, it's me. I'm asking you."

"There's people a lot more desperate than us. Try some of these other crazies here. See how far that'll get you."

"Sir, I'll go," Woodrow said.

Reed looked at the man, and so did Fraser—she looked betrayed. Woodrow set down his mop.

"I figure a job like that's more my speed. I'll go," he repeated.

Reed remembered him from the pelican. First to stand and help eject their precious supplies because he'd asked him to. He took him in at a glance now, taking into account his bandaged wrist that was no longer hidden by a long sleeve—nothing like a battle wound but he knew it was something he'd gotten on account of the war. Maybe he could work with him. He knew a man like that before and he turned out okay. Reed didn't have anyone, the fact remained, and he'd take anyone now who knew how to shoot a rifle. So he pointed at him and said to Fraser, "That's one. Don't send us out there alone. Likely to die, if that's how you still feel about it."

Woodrow joined Reed at the back. Fraser still looked unconvinced, but she glowered at Woodrow. She'd badly wanted out of hard-labour company, but this was not a step up. This was inching closer to dying than anything else you could be doing, galloping starkly into the heart of the wasteland and as stupid as that sounded it was accurate. She liked Reed as a man but she knew the kind of person he was in this army, a muddy superstar who always went first and crashed out of the tall grass to come and save the day when you never expected him, who always smelled like twigs and shrubbery and firewood. Good old Reed. That was when he also had a team of tough, highly-trained super-men who went feet-first through the stratosphere to pad out the line-up and watch his back. Where were they now? Reed wasn't foolish or overzealous, but it didn't change the fact he took on the toughest assignments he could in woodsy Aurelia, found flanks where there shouldn't have been any, when Fraser was a sergeant in Shield Company and saw firsthand. Fraser always knew him that way, but she heard from Lake sometime after, during their downtime, that he wasn't always like this, that he's changed—Cassandra changed him.

Reed and Woodrow started to walk off when Fraser yelled for them to wait. She said, "If I come with you, I'm out of this outfit, yeah? For good? Stern won't cry foul and toss me back here again?"

"Montclair gave me her blessing," Reed promised.

Fraser kicked over the mop-bucket and hopped out of the flooded pelican. Reed rounded up a handful more, enough for more than a full squad—men who'd give anything to be anywhere but here (even out there), who tossed down their weighty loads and strolled off towards their conditional freedom, calling McCann a lazy fuck one by one as they left.

McCann told them he didn't care if he never saw any of them again and hoped the apes would take their time killing them because they probably deserved it. Anyone could have told Reed it was a bad idea, taking these men from the disciplinary platoon. They were all here for reasons that weren't unreasonable—nobody incarcerated on false charges. They weren't murderers or rapists (at least Reed didn't think so and didn't ask) but they'd all been taken from their normal, functioning squads and platoons and dropped here to toil in the sun and repent for their past behaviours. Combat would be the true test of their worth—if they were ready to return to the fold as good soldiers.

Or they'd die.

* * *

Reed and his dozen or so loaded up into three warthogs Major Montclair had freed up with haste and they headed out. Chief Fontaine had given him approximate coordinates to where he'd seen enemy troops moving, and Reed was going to drive straight into it.

They passed through the battalion's forward line, a raggedy perimeter set up far enough out where they couldn't see the hospital anymore. Their warthogs drew no attention from the sleepy-looking soldiers who sat behind sandbagged emplacements with their machine guns and huge, legged anti-tank TOW weapons and watched for any shimmery flickers of movement down the road. Not a city block from where they were positioned was already considered hostile territory where Covie could come at you from any which way because you could get lost, disoriented in a space that was so vast and so cluttered all at once.

The three warthogs wound through the messy street that was formless, avoiding gaping shell holes and abandoned cars, some of which had already been bulldozed off to the side. This wasn't unknown territory—there were visible signs of fighting all over, mounds of bullet casings, charred wrecks of fighting vehicles—the road was just unsecured and abandoned, conceded to the Covenant because it was too much work to look after and hopefully the Covie troops had felt the same so that it truly was no man's land. But maybe they hadn't. Maybe they'd moved right in and found some advantage here the UNSC forces didn't. Reed and his cohort would be the first to find out, if that was the case.

Everyone aboard the steady, trundling warthogs kept their eyes focused on the chipped, concrete mass housing that lined the streets and looked like brutal air-raid bunkers, their obliterated sliding doors and empty balconies that rose into the sky and used to be jammed full of people just living. The rest of the city looked like this too, now: chipped away at, left behind, and full of used-to's. Or brought to the ground in a gravelly pile, unrecognizable. This was the place they were scrapping over, if you could believe it. It was ugly, bombed-out and ruined and neither side really wanted it. They just wanted to kill each other and maybe push further on after enough death would grant them their triumphant passage.

They all smelt the pelican crash that hung in the air: that mix of burning, synthetic material that could waft throughout the city indefinitely and was a clear indicator that they approached something bad. They drove past the scene of the crash and they all got a good look so they could murmur and deduce what probably happened to the pelican that lay sagging and distended, cracked open from the impact of its landing. It had only been an hour since it was shot down so sedate fires still simmered inside and around it. There were bodies that crawled a short distance away or had been pulled outside of the wreckage but Reed didn't make the suggestion of stopping and checking for a pulse. Fontaine had said there were survivors farther down and they must have left these ones behind because they were being hunted. They rolled on and sure enough, they heard the distinct sounds of Covenant weapons fire over the engine noises. They were still a block out and didn't see anything but the men hugged their rifles closer and kept glancing at the rooftops and windows. Reed looked behind him and motioned for each warthog to get a man on the gun now—they were slow enough moving he wouldn't lose his balance and tumble out if they hit a bad dip in the road.

They could hear those plasma rifles louder now, more crackly and unnerving like snapping live-wire electricity than anything else. Just around the bend to go...

 _Wait_. Reed twisted around again and made a hand signal to kill all engines, _stop-stop-stop_. The men were all tensed up, mentally preparing themselves to get back into the fight they'd been away from, stuck in hard-labour company. They'd been shot at on the line most of them recently, shovels in their hands, but now they were shooting back, now they were going to have to chase down any Covenant and kill him because there was nothing else to do, no other job to get done.

The lieutenant had a pair of field glasses he gripped, staring out over top of the windshield but the problem wasn't distance—Covie was nearby and anybody here could tell you that—it was diving into a situation he knew nothing about. Fontaine had said some men were pinned down, needed help now and quick. It'd taken him closer to twenty minutes to get out here and as much as he hated to admit it, Covie worked fast. Starving you out was never how they operated..

To the men in his vehicle, he said, "Need somebody to scout ahead before we move."

Woodrow volunteered. Another man, Delonge, also raised his hand. Fraser pretended not to hear.

Reed tapped the back of his seat. "There's an S2-rifle back there. One of you take it. Can you shoot?"

Woodrow and Delonge glanced at each other, a silent, frigid conversation. They didn't know each other. Neither wanted to get killed if the other didn't know what he was doing, and the Covies had long learned their ways: the humongous anti-materiel rifle made you a target more than always and when the Covies placed you, they stopped at nothing to take you out. The men didn't know if either had the skill, or the restraint, or was not a moron in any way. They'd both ended up in chain-gang after all.

"I can shoot," Woodrow said finally. Delonge had a look like festering, uncertain regret for not speaking up first but grabbed the spotter's equipment anyway. Woodrow slung his own weapon and lifted the big rifle with both hands and most of his arm strength.

"Okay," Reed said, peering forward again. "Get up there, Recon. Get me eyes somewhere, anywhere, just paint me a beautiful picture with words. Let's do this right."

Woodrow and Delonge jumped out and headed into the blown-out front of a cafe just off the road, skirting knocked over chairs and tables on the sidewalk. A staircase took them to the apartments upstairs and they took each step with tender movements. This was Old Mombasa. Nothing was built to modern code and the whole place was rocked, the wood feeling like it was about to give out spectacularly with both of them on it at once. Three dusty floors up and they found their vantage point. A large section of the apartment had been demolished so the place was uncomfortably blown wide open, and they snaked their way around the back of the room where the floor was not drooping into the toothy hardwood maw. Delonge unpacked his spotter's scope while Woodrow found a kitchen counter to rest his S2-rifle. Bipod deployed, chunky mags laid out nearby and easy to reach. He could shoot. He was good at it, even. He'd been a sniper back in snowy, muddy Beletzkov.

Delonge swept carefully, professionally, one eye pinched shut. He relayed back to Reed: "Covies in force. Looks like a squad, no more than two—bout a hundred metres out. Breathers and birds, two of 'em. Hairy officer calling the shots."

Somehow Woodrow took solace that some Brute led the force. The other, more common sight was the Elite—far more skilled and practiced.

"How's it look out there?" Reed asked.

"Market square, I think. Not a lot of room to manoeuvre the hogs—cars parked around a fountain in the centre. Might be a cramped entrance. You could chance some drive-by shootings, but they'll catch onto that after the first or second pass. And uh, I see bodies, sir. Human. Piled outside a pub 150 metres from my position, compass bearing three-two-seven. Those shots we heard..."

"Fuckin' firing squad."

"Or a defensive position. If our boys are holed up anywhere..."

"It'd be there." Reed noted the position with his own compass and passed along the info over his radio. "Nobody put fire into that building. You can't control your shots, you move your ass, you get a better angle on 'em. I don't want no blue on blue today. Last thing I need, goddammit."

The lieutenant climbed down from the warthog and the rest of his men dismounted as well, falling in line. These people, about ten behind him, had been in Mombasa for a while now, some with the battalion for years. They had skill and knew how to take orders even if they were fuckups. If they were nervous about heading back into combat, nobody said a thing or showed it. And despite the city's ragged appearance, it was still recognizable and human, not a foreign world they took in wide-eyed. It had a lulling effect. Dangerous, that. They approached the street corner and Reed said to Delonge over comms, "You tell us when."

"You're clear."

Reed told the lead warthog to set off, and the convoy inched out. A man lying prone at the corner poked his head around it and began to fire off his assault rifle while another man stood over him and joined in. Their shots smashed into the cars surrounding the fountain knocking out glass everywhere but some hit Covies too. The alien soldiers unscathed spun and scrambled for cover. Reed gave a couple others a shove and they moved out before he followed them at a cautious march. There was plenty of debris, piled junk and collapsed walls strewn across the square they could hide behind. They spread out and Reed fired his own rifle blindly before ducking down behind something, a blasted-up concrete barrier used to line the gently curving street. More of his people followed, taking up positions, picking off the Covenant who began to break and fall back. The punch of their gunfire pounded off the buildings and reverberated again and again, drowning out everything else and making it seem like there were three times as many of them as there were.

From that shattered apartment, Woodrow watched the men gain ground, firing and moving in turns, attacking the besieged jackals from two directions, these men knew all the steps. He'd fired the S2-rifle once at Delonge's called target, punching cleanly through the armoured brute soldier that looked like it was making a break for the pub the moment Reed's troops began shooting. The anti-tank round split the alien apart, the wound a giant V-shape that hewn everything from shoulder to neck. The gunshot deafened both men in the room for a moment so Woodrow couldn't hear Delonge when he confirmed the kill afterwards but few Covies ever survived the power of the chambered cartridge that was meant to penetrate hardened vehicle-plating.

He took his finger off the trigger once the warthogs navigated around the corner and slipped into the shootout, exposing themselves fully now. Their gunners only needed to fire a short while before the dispersing Covies were shot dead, disemboweled by those tri-barreled fifties—anti-aircraft guns that made holes in just about anything you wanted them to. The Covies who didn't want to budge from their hiding places were eventually flushed out with grenades and after those concise explosions had faded, the men hollered "clear!" to each other across the square. Engines rumbled idle. Gunpowder smell clogged lungs.

Delonge let go of the spotter's scope that hung around his neck and picked up his rifle. He nodded at Woodrow for a job well done, and the corporal began to secure his gear again. He got to a knee and carefully placed the unused mags back into his ruck. Delonge stood by the edge of broken floor and kicked a piece of rubble down it. Woodrow heard it plop somewhere below.

At this moment, the Covies who were laying in wait (who had been all this time) took this lull for themselves, to turn the tide and catch Reed's men in the street unaware. White-blue tracers of an alien gun screamed and rocketed from the top-floor window of the pub and obliterated two men who had been making their way over to the building. Everyone who had been milling around looting the dead and peering into ground-floor windows dove down like they were caught in an artillery strike—the attack had come at their most vulnerable and from on high. Some had no cover and lay down beside the Covenant dead because getting up and running guaranteed you getting blasted and strafed a couple more times for good measure.

A second sustained burst angled towards the lead warthog and melted sections of its armour when it struck. In a cloud of vapour and fumes, its gunner rolled off and out of the bed and took cover behind the vehicle, the sheer heat of those projectiles making it impossible to remain in place. The warthogs began to reverse clumsily, seeking the protection they'd had before they rounded the corner. The second and third LAAG gunners put desperate rounds into the top floor of the pub only to cover their retreat. The blue stream of fire did not lessen. The men in the square, pinned down, stared bug-eyed after the vehicles that were seemingly leaving them to die.

They all looked at Reed too because he'd told them not to shoot at the pub and now that meant nothing. From his own cover he glared at the warthog column but their pulling back wasn't a move of cowardice. Panic, maybe, though for good reason—that Covie machine gun was capable of reducing those lightly armoured vehicles into fiery metal and molten rubber and then they'd be even worse off and left without a ride back to the hospital.

He hit his comm and shouted, "Recon, shut that fucking thing down! You copy?"

Delonge and Woodrow had both thrown themselves to the floor when they heard the Covie gun because they had no idea where it was or what it had been aiming at in that moment and it could have been them. There wasn't much for Delonge to hide behind so he jumped back into the stairway while Woodrow got comfy behind the counter.

Reed's call came in and Delonge yelled to Woodrow from across the apartment, "Hey! Take the shot!"

The S2-rifle was still on top of the counter and Woodrow made no motion to stand up and grab it. He should have known, the way the brute was hauling ass towards the pub before he killed it. They'd already revealed their position up here and there was no way to leave the wide-open apartment except back the way they came. And from the window Woodrow had set up in, there was no angle on that particular Covie—he knew that to be a fact. He shook his head at Delonge. "It's not safe. Just stay put. I'll think of something."

Delonge looked at him like he was crazy. "Lieutenant said take 'em out!"

"I open up it'll be us who eat it next, buddy. Covies aren't playing with that gun."

"So kill it, god dammit. Target's right there," Delonge said. "They're killing our guys!"

"Don't you move. I mean it. I need a minute. Just give me a minute."

Over comms Reed repeated the order again, agitation straining his voice and Delonge scowled. "Mother fuckin'..." He glared at Woodrow and made up his mind. "Gimme that rifle!"

Delonge rose to his full height and fell back down again because a Covie sniper-shot snickered from somewhere and popped through his chest and left some of him on the aft wall. Now on his back, straining his neck, Delonge wheezed a gurgling moan and moved his arms weakly and looked straight at Woodrow and Woodrow could tell just by looking back at him, listening to him, it hadn't been a shot intended to kill. Delonge had a shot-out lung and he was bleeding out, which was the point. Woodrow had a canister of biofoam in his ruck and that could save the man but he made no move to grab it either. He was trapped behind this counter and the apartment was laid entirely bare so he watched Delonge slowly die—the man was clawing his way over to Woodrow leaving bloody palm prints on the ridden floor when he finally stopped moving.

There was a time he would have run out and risked it because it was the right thing to do and he would have emerged from the ruined cafe with Delonge draped around his shoulder just barely hanging on, eternally grateful for his quick thinking and selfless action... he knew better now. He knew Covenant tricks. So now Delonge was eternally dead. A more patient shooter would have waited for Woodrow to take the shot, waited all night if he had to, but an equally patient, ruthless bastard shot the man who was easy and waited for his friend to show up and try to pull him to safety—or oftentimes a medic, prime targets for the Covies in the Beletzkovs of the galaxy. But Woodrow didn't know Delonge. He listened to him choking and half-pleading for Woodrow's help as he died but he could feel nothing. He'd seen many men and women suffer deaths a hundred times more painful than Delonge's. This was nothing to him. Delonge was nobody to him. He felt him slip away and still he didn't move.

The Covenant machine gun fired only sporadically now, searching for targets but everybody remained motionless, pretending to be dead. They couldn't stay this way for much longer they knew; there was already movement in the other windows, more hiding Covenant, who'd come and check their corpses. They all heard stories that they ate people if they got hungry enough, if the conditions were brutal and bitter enough. Reed peered over the top of the barrier and glanced over to where his recon element was supposed to be. They'd gone silent and he hoped it was to get a better position on the Covie MG.

Fraser was hiding nearby and Reed said to her, "Something's wrong. Recon's dark."

She took it in stride, shaking her head and muttering "fuck's sake" but nothing more than that.

She was steely in her own way, and only Woodrow knew she had chickened out and skipped out on deploying with 2nd Battalion to the large-scale air-land war over there that annihilated whole platoons in minutes given the type of firepower they were slinging at each other. To Reed, though, she was as hardened as anyone who survived an engagement in Stern's company. So Reed thought nothing of it to ask her to run back to the warthogs who had just pulled around the corner (they were waiting to be called back into action as soon as their lieutenant had his shit together and wouldn't get all of them blown up and killed) and recover that anti-materiel rifle if Woodrow had been incapacitated because there was Tungsten-tipped incendiary ammunition tucked away somewhere in those hogs and they needed to be shot at that MG now or soon.

Fraser balked at the order but she knew Reed could kick her ass back to disciplinary if she refused—left behind again, maybe shipped back to 2nd Battalion on a red-eye out (flight ban be damned; a favour from Mattis to golden-boy Stern) because there would be no one around who cared to be around her at the hospital, who'd fight on her behalf to keep her with them and had the actual power to do so. The bums she called friends were nobodies themselves, line company privates—alkies, smackheads and punters all those cunts off the battlefield, so Reed was a bridge Fraser could not burn. She was getting out of hard-labour company a free woman or dying here.

On Reed's go, he shouted for every man to lay fire down on the upper floor window. Those who were out in the open sprang up and ran for better cover, firing on the move, just putting shots in that direction. The front of the pub splintered and cracked and dust sprayed everywhere and the Covie MG was slow to return fire, so Fraser didn't hear it start shooting until she was halfway gone and it didn't bother with her so she managed to escape.

Around the corner she found the warthogs, the hood popped up on the lead one. A couple of soldiers from the other warthogs were elbow deep into the vehicle's engine block and they nearly reached for their rifles and shot her as she came streaking out of the alley.

She said to them, "You there, what's the problem? Quickly now." Her time as a non-com was coming back to her she felt, and she stared down each soldier as if they were hers.

One wiped his hands on his pants. He was skinny, like his jacket was too big for him, and he wore glasses and looked too bright a kid to be in a shit situation like this. God would Fraser love to know what he was doing in chain-gang in the first place—what kind of dark, terrible deed did he commit to end up here. He said, "She took a few hits. The casing stopped most of it but she's too hot. Cooking up under there. We're seeing what else got hit."

"And?"

"Still looking."

Fraser said, "But it'll run?"

"If she cools off."

"Then make that happen. We're taking it out."

The kid said, "What the hell for? Other two hogs are just fine. This one's beat up."

Fraser took a step forward. She was taller than him by half a head. "We're going to get shot at, that's why. Better this one than the others, yeah?"

He looked over at the others milling around and said, "Somebody get me water."

Fraser said, "Save the water. There's no telling if we'll be stuck out here all night. Think."

"Then—"

She yanked his helmet off and shoved it into his gut. He clutched it like a bowl, flustered. "You'll figure it out, Boy Scout. You'd better. Before I get back." Fraser climbed up into the warthog and rooted around the equipment netting until she found a box of what Reed was talking about, that thick and potentially glorious 14.5x114mm API ammunition. But no empty mags around so she'd have to deal with that later on. She headed into the cafe they'd last seen Woodrow and Delonge enter. She moved up the stairs and instinctively slowed when she saw the top of the steps open up into nothingness, all hazy orange Mombasa sky. The roof and wall had been ripped away. Where she was hiding with Reed she hadn't gotten a good look at this place from down below in the square.

"Woody!" she hissed, creeping up. "Are you alive?"

"Yeah! Don't come up!"

Fraser nodded to herself. A welcome confirmation to hear his voice, nothing to get overjoyed about though. They were still in a predicament and one or both of them could still get murdered by Covies in the next little while. Nothing was guaranteed. "Are you hit?" she said.

"Sniper has me zeroed in. Delonge's dead."

"Reed's going to need that rifle in play, Woody."

"I know."

"I need you to make the shot."

"I know."

Fraser crawled out just far enough she could just see a bit of Woodrow, sitting there underneath the counter. Delonge bled out in the distance somewhere between him and her and she could see his boot sticking out. Sure enough he looked dead.

"Woody, Reed asked me to give you these. You'll need to pack them into a mag of your own." Fraser opened up the box of ammo. She couldn't toss it to Woodrow but she could try something else. She stuck her hand out into the open and began to chuck, one by one, the high-explosive rounds at the wall between them, hoping they'd hit and drop somewhere nearby him.

They plinked and rolled on the sloping floor, some right off the edge, and Woodrow could see their bright tips clearly now and he almost jumped up, startled like there was an unexpected bug crawling on him. "Jesus! Careful!"

Then there went the box. She tossed the cardboard away and she shouted, "Did you get any?"

"Delonge stole most of 'em."

"Ask him if you can have them back. I haven't got any more."

Between Woodrow and Delonge was a space of a few metres, plenty of room for someone to nail him with a high-powered precision weapon if he took his chances. If Fraser's explosive rounds hadn't rolled off the edge into the pit below they pooled around Delonge's body.

"I need to go, Woody. You need to take out that MG," Fraser said. "I'll draw their fire, all right? Wait for me."

"Okay. Good luck."

"Woody, wait for me."

When Fraser returned to the warthogs, the blackened one's hood had been lowered back into place and the poor kid was scouring his hands with sanitizer. She tugged on his sleeve and said, "I want you in the driver's seat, luv."

The disdain never left his face but now he began to look scared. Before he could ask why she told him, "You're little. I'll bet you can't even see over the top of the steering wheel. That might just save your life. But it won't be you they're going to be shooting at anyway."

Nobody else volunteered, they just wished the guy luck and stood back. They all wondered who would be in the second seat. Even though Fraser's jacket read "Private" they just knew she carried the power of Reed's lieutenancy herself in this instance and if she said get on the gun, they'd have to.

But Fraser said "just keep her under control" as she climbed into the truck bed. The group of men gaped—some looked relieved, others slightly ashamed. She'd wanted to point a finger and strap someone else onto the gun but she didn't know these men, slackers maybe like herself, a far cry from the eager and hungry members of Shield Company, she couldn't trust they'd do what she asked. Timing was everything. Who was to say the men she picked wouldn't cut and run the moment there was trouble? So she'd do this one herself. God dammit Reed had better not been lying about getting her out of chain-gang. He'd owe her one. That was all she was thinking about as she tugged huge welders gloves over her hands—she could barely move her stiff fingers but all she needed were her thumbs—and draped someone's fire retardant coverall over the front of the fifty-cal's plate shield. It wouldn't stop a burn any better than how bare skin held up (it didn't at all), but layers were layers, and in theory it'd help with the indirect, radiant heat.

"Reed," Fraser said over the comm once she was ready. "Our man will take the shot. I'll provide base of fire. Be ready to regroup your men."

"All right, I got you. Standing by."

He'd fucking owe her one, all right. She slapped on the last piece of her gear, the welder's mask from the onboard toolkit where she found her gloves and drew it tight around the back of her head. She was sure she looked ridiculous. Not that she'd survive a direct shot to her face but Covie plasma was vicious in all ways, and it was easy to be burned when it impacted close by and spackled like a hissing liquid spray.

She told the men by her to mount up in the other warthogs. Be ready to follow her in, depending on the situation. Sort whatever needed to be sorted now. She hoped Woodrow was ready as well because it was now or never.

"Nice and gentle now, Boy Scout," she told her driver. "Softest kiss you can give the throttle."

The warthog set off with an unsteady jolt. Her heart was going nuts in there, her skin felt prickly. Her breath resounded through the shell of her mask; fog flared up on the bottom of the visor. She reached forward and pulled the coveralls up past her forearms and kept as low as she possibly could.

Out from behind the corner now. Sunlight. And she was clear.

She spun up and unleashed her fire, her tracers spurting at that window for a good five seconds, relentless, so prolonged she thought she might even have gotten the fucker.

Then it returned fire and plasma enveloped the front of the warthog and all around her. The windshield blew inward and her driver let out a pained cry through clenched teeth. Those flame-resistant coveralls caught on fucking fire and smoke billowed directly into her face and nose under her mask, but still she traded shots back and forth with the MG and didn't let up on the mashed-down trigger bar no matter how much it hurt to breathe. She couldn't see much with the smoke and moisture steaming up her visor, creating a rippled, watery image before her, but during all of this Reed rallied his men not wasting a second. He darted forward and urged them all to their feet just beneath her field of fire. They ran to cover haphazardly, all stumbling and tripped up, shooting blindly from the hip as they went.

Fraser felt like she was choking, like she might pass out, so she finally ripped off her mask and let out a savage yell—agonized, because her face and lungs stung and her eyes were tearing, but also somewhat charged and exuberant, exhilarated, honestly, but only a tiny bit.

Woodrow heard her voice over the moaning roar of the fifty and that was what moved his ass. The sniper could still be there and he might have waited (he caught himself thinking, who was Fraser to him?) but she screamed and sounded like she was dying and it frightened him. The enemy sniper would miss or it wouldn't, and Woodrow made his peace with that; he lifted the S2-rifle off the counter and stepped out into the open.

He placed three shots into the top floor of the building rapidly burning off the rest of the rounds, not aiming for anything in particular. He had his reason. After ejecting the spent mag, he had just enough time to scurry forward and throw himself onto the floor next to Delonge and reach out for that explosive ammunition when hot Covie plasma blew apart the wall above him but he'd forgotten how much it hurt his skin to be this close to it, like it clung to him—he felt like he was choking too, drowning in sticky moisture-boiled air—so he lost his nerve and rolled to get away. Damn everything else. He went over the edge of the hole in the apartment floor and prayed for a short drop.

It was short enough because he hit something protruding on the way down first and that slowed him. He landed on his side on the ground floor, winded, on lumber and drywall and bits of window—no spindly rebar or anything like that but it still hurt. It was a huge pile of rubble he fell into and it protected and hid Woodrow when the MG followed his descent. Its fire kicked up huge plumes of powder and particulates, lighting up the whole pile. Woodrow's anti-materiel rifle was empty now, and his spare mags were in his ruck that was still in the apartment above. But looking around, his gaze was suddenly drawn to those yellow-tipped rounds that stuck out in the debris scattered around him that might as well have glinted like pure gold.

Everyone in the square heard Woodrow's hurried shots and Covie fire tracked him and demolished everything in the upper level of that building. In the brief opening this allowed, Fraser shrugged off the steaming coverall that was still smouldering and told her driver to gun it—they were going to smash right into the centre of the square.

Reed must have seen what she intended because over the radio net he shouted: "Get those hogs in there! Right now, right now! Light up that floor with everything you got!"

As Fraser continued to fire, she was joined by the other two LAAGs coming up behind her. Their tracers drilled through the walls and window sills. The sheer sound of their combined fire sounded like they would never stop dishing it out—it drowned out everything else for blocks probably. Covie return fire was uncoordinated but still there, still hanging on. Reed feared any moment now they could turn their gun on the warthogs once again and then it'd be over for good.

But Woodrow had manually chambered one of the yellow-tips that he polished off with a sleeve and a bit of spit he miraculously conjured up from his parched, gritty-feeling throat, and crawled to where he could just see the top of the MG position. The window lit up, searching the debris pile for him, ignoring the warthogs for now. Plasma vaporized things metres away from where he lay. He lined up his shot but he didn't need to be too accurate this time, either.

The rifle kicked his shoulder and dust jumped up everywhere around him, and the side of the pub ripped open in a flash of fire. Smoke escaped through every window of the darkened, roiling top floor. Woodrow reached up, hand-fed another, and delivered that one as well. Another explosion on the opposite side of the building, now. There was no more Covenant fire anymore, and the warthog gunners also quit shooting one after the other as their drivers came to a halt around the fountain. The gunners trained their barrels on the windows, wary eyes squinting through the dust and cordite that strained the sun.

After the first detonation, Reed was out of cover, on his feet running. He and others put fire into the ground floor of the pub because they'd seen Covenant shoot at them from there too. Woodrow's second shot overhead showered them all with ash and burning bits as they approached but they stormed the pub and tossed their grenades unhindered. They went room by room. A crackle of gunfire here and there. Woodrow relinquished his aim and then and rolled over onto his side to catch his breath. His ribcage had begun to hurt.

Ears ringing and still feeling the heat of the explosions from where she was, Fraser slumped down in the truck bed. She laid her head back and slung an elbow over the tailgate. The kid in the driver's seat blew out an amazed "holy shit!" and turned to the lady behind him whose eyes were serenely shut.

He said, "I'm Riz."

She said, "I don't care."

Inside, Reed took to the stairs, his rifle set to full-auto. His men shot any Covie they came across, kicked down every door and broke into closets. On the top floor, it looked like what you'd expect after being hit with two bursts of those particular type of S2 rounds. Blackened Covenant dead or dying with their shrapnel-split skin and choked noises. The machine gun position had been cleared out and that was all that really mattered. Among the Covies, though, Reed also found the bodies of men in their Army jackets and boots. Some had unit patches, but most didn't. They would have become Nine-oh-six men if they lived. Plasma wounds had mangled them before Reed's force ever got there. Fontaine's intel was solid, they'd just been too late and had gotten suckered into this ugly fight. This was just another group of men and women wiped out before his eyes in this war. A squad, a company, it didn't matter, it all stung. Reed was getting tired of it just as much as he was already numbed from it.

He came down the stairs, cigarette tucked in his mouth, rifle cradled under his arm, and as he passed his men he told them to gather up the dead—they were coming back home with them.

IV

Reed was silent the drive back. He sank into his seat and stared at the barren, sunken city passing by. Fraser and Woodrow crossed their arms and slouched over the rollbar above him, half-standing in the bed, leaning and bobbing in tandem with each movement the warthog made. Going back the way they came, around the abandoned cars and fallen streetlights along the deeply bombed-out streets that exposed whitish caved-in sewer mains in parts the way bone might show through rubbery, lacerated flesh.

They'd gathered up all the dead soldiers: the butchered replacements who never made it to the hospital, the ones who died in the pelican crash too, then the two from the battalion's chain-gang who were cut down by the Covie machine gun they never saw, and the man who'd gone up to scout ahead with Woodrow. They arranged the bodies on the floor of the warthogs but there simply wasn't enough room. They laid some of them across the hoods of the warthogs, heads and faces covered up, bungee-corded in place so they wouldn't fall off and only stacked them when they had no other choice. The disciplinary unit men had made room awkwardly: standing and hanging on like Fraser and Woodrow, or sitting perched on the edges of the beds, legs dangling off the sides and rear bumper. The bodies stunk and leaked onto the floor and got on their pants but everyone kept their complaints to themselves.

When they pulled up to the front of the hospital, Montclair was waiting on the steps having a quiet smoke. They'd of course radioed in long before showing up so there were no surprises. She grimly looked at the warthogs that were loaded up with twice as many bodies as when they had left, only half of them still breathing now. Even though most of them were replacements, they would have been 1st Battalion, their own, if they'd lived. It hurt to see. Soldiers with stretchers nearby got to work while Reed's people helped pass the dead down. The lieutenant himself eased out of the vehicle, leg by leg, and plodded towards Montclair.

"You found them," she said, consoling, or at least it was an attempt at doing so.

"I did," Reed said. "Y'know if we'd just went in by air. Maybe. Just maybe..."

"Resources we just couldn't spare," Montclair said. "I'm sorry, Reed."

"Nobody out there but nobodies, right?"

Montclair said nothing to that.

"Like to think that it's Covie's fault. That they're soulless and hellbent and there's nothing we coulda done. But maybe it isn't really. Maybe it's that bastard Mattis' fault, I could find myself thinking."

"That's a dangerous road to travel down."

"Well I'm down it just the same. If he doesn't see the point of what we're doing here, mission in Mombasa, guess I'm just finding it harder to make him. He's the one starving us, isn't he?"

"You can point your fingers all you want, Reed, and I'll let you today, but you know it's not that simple."

"But it should be, right?"

"If there were any justice in this world," Montclair said softly, "fuckin' rights it should be."

They watched her people called up from the forward medical support company ID the soldiers and unfurl their body bags right there outside the hospital. They'll put them in a cold dark room somewhere in the basement until that time they could ship them back to the IRIS site. Reed's men from chain-gang hung around watching too, making small talk, waiting for whatever came next. They survived but that was all. No backslapping or feeling like they showed Covie what was what. They'd all been fighting too long for that.

Montclair said to him, "You did a good thing out there. Might not seem like it now, but there was nothing to do but try. Game was rigged against you from the start."

"So does this one count for us or against us? Playing from behind and all."

"Pity points don't count. Would have been nice, you bringing them back alive, but that's not the way this goes I suppose. I might leave this one out in my report to Wu."

"I feel for the guy."

"If anyone can bring back the air-corridor it'll be him," Montclair insisted.

"Hour's getting late in the war. Like to think there's a miracle in store but maybe I've become like Watson as well."

Montclair smiled a bit but Reed wasn't looking at her so he didn't see it. "If that's your idea of a miracle, Reed, clouds just parted and Heavenly light just shone down upon our hovel. You'll shit your damn pants."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Reed said. "The first part, I mean, not—"

"—We've got a few new arrivals to the hospital. Come from on high. I think you'll want to meet 'em. You come on inside now," she said.

Reed motioned for his people to follow him. Although Woodrow stayed behind to help move the bodies because he didn't mind the work—they were just bodies to him, he didn't know them.

Reed said to Montclair, "About this squad... they did well when it counted. Never been in combat with each other before and they made it work. That's more than I can say for a lot of units."

Montclair glanced over at them. "I'm glad."

"I promised them they'd be out of disciplinary if they fought, and they did. Would be a kindness if you were to reassign them... grant them a pardon, if you will."

"Just give me a list of names," she said.

Reed nodded appreciatively. Hard to find anyone who didn't like the major. If you were having a fight, it was you who was letting her down, causing her upset.

Inside the hospital, the two officers walked past the reception area and waiting room to where it opened up into a grand, marble staircase that bisected two floors, the entire lounge seemingly crafted with opulence and Catholic reverence in mind. An old elevator, its outer gate intact, stood off to the side—still operable, Reed was happy (gleeful, even) to report. There was a larger, modern freight elevator a little farther down, a decidedly more recent addition.

The windows had all been barred off but that was done before the war came to Mombasa. Abby was an old hospital in one of the city's slums, repurposed from a centuries-old museum (nobody would ever design a hospital with this much wasted space), which had been in turn repurposed from something else way back when—a hotel, maybe, because there was a ballroom inside it that now housed at least 140 civilian refugees. First Battalion troops were billeted in hospital rooms or housing outside, abandoned buildings and apartments on the street. Military vehicles were kept and maintained in the yard out back beside the ambulances.

The lounge was kept tidy, almost no sign of military presence save for a some scattered personnel, coffees in hand, going where they were supposed to. Their eyes all, however, traveled up that staircase to the landing and some even stopped to stare (Reed certainly did) where Lieutenant Colonel Watson stood with a Marine and—clad in gleaming, spectacular olive-drab armoured plating—a Spartan.

The supersoldier was expectantly the tallest in the group huddled around Watson, dwarfing him. Its golden gaze was aimed right down at him, seemingly intent to take in whatever info could be offered by the man. The other was a young officer, a captain already. It was too early to tell if he was a bookish type, a 90-day wonder, with his boyish face and unsullied uniform. Or was he like him, tried by fire, made an officer because Covie killed the man he replaced?

Watson leaned against the banister, arms folded casually. He spotted Reed and Montclair climbing the steps. "Hello again, Lieutenant. Glad you made it back."

"Colonel," Reed said. "Don't know if you heard—"

"—All that can wait, son. Like you to meet our houseguests: Captain Pennington and, uh, Spartan Oh-Seven-One."

"Amy," she said.

Reed set pieces of his armor ensemble down on a nearby step as he ascended and they exchanged handshakes. He was grimy and had blood smears across his shirt but nobody said anything about it and some didn't even notice.

"You've met my company commanders," Watson said to them, "but here's someone you might be shoulder to shoulder with out there, in the thick of things, especially anything involving supply runs. Lieutenant Reed outta Dog Company."

"You here to help us fight?" Reed asked them, like he was suspicious. They could have just been passing through. He took nothing for granted these days.

The Spartan deferred to Captain Pennington without hesitation, glancing his direction.

Pennington hesitated, looked like he had just reconsidered what would have been his first response. He settled on offering Reed a smile and a nod and said, "You just let us know if we can be of any assistance."

Reed became attuned to reading the people in his midst over the years, and tried as best he could to examine that statement without taking too long. "Glad you're here. Looking forward to working with you."

Pennington again nodded.

"Say," Reed said, "how'd you swing getting a ride over here? Air traffic's been halted, far as I know."

"It still is." Watson cut in. "This one comes from the top. General wanted it done so it got done. Quite a character, that LeMay."

Reed and Montclair detected the hint of bitterness behind that. If Pennington did too, he didn't show it.

"We're Lima Company. Newly-formed special warfare unit under LeMay."

Reed just listened, offered no reaction.

"If they'd send anybody to clean up a mess, it'd be a Spartan I have to imagine."

Reed ignored that last remark. He couldn't tell if it was simple small-talk or a critique of how things were perceived by newly-arrived outsiders. Reed couldn't help but glance down at his own uniform, though, noting its deterioration. He was surely eligible to receive a fresh-enough set from the supply orderly. And who could've missed that stampede of medics and their cargo earlier?

"Were you shot at?" Reed asked Pennington. "How's the situation up there?"

"Hostile aircraft vectored in but disengaged pretty quickly. We had numbers on our side, happy to say."

"A wing of fighters deployed from a UNSC warship," Watson winked at Reed. "Can't remember the last time anyone laid out the red carpet for _us_ like that."

Reed replied matter o'factly, like he'd seen it for himself in times before, "Navy looks after its own." He then turned to face Pennington. "You must be a joint-force unit."

"That's right. Army one-star at the top, and people of all other branches working for and with him."

"You work directly under a general?" Reed's brow cocked to one side like Pennington was peddling something. An air of superiority? No, that wasn't it. Eyes were too kind. False hope for his war-weary hosts? Even if so, Reed wouldn't ever pine for something like that. Far better for his troops to grasp reality as it was dealt than to meander in a delusion. But Pennington wasn't pushing for anything. No _put us in, coach!_ or anything like that. In fact, he seemed well-reserved to Reed. The ex-Helljumper couldn't know for sure, though, couldn't judge him fully after only five minutes. All he knew was what Watson said a moment prior: this group of marines was assured safe arrival here.

"How many in your unit?" Reed queried. "You said you were just a company, right?"

"Exactly one-hundred. Average numbers for a marine company. Add another twenty-five if you count the scientists..."

Pennington fell silent for three full seconds just then, his breath held in, a Freudian Slip that Reed was certain only he picked up on—maybe the Spartan as well with the way she almost glanced him.

"LeMay heads the agency," Pennington recovered, "but due to our extreme distance away we never heard of him until recently. Captain Lawson is our boss."

"A captain. Your boss is equal to you?"

Pennington chuckled. "Way above me. Navy man. Oh-six."

"Under the wing of an eagle, huh? Well, this here is a particularly dangerous place outside the nest you come from."

"You don't have to tell us. We've seen it before, elsewhere. We're from Zaragosa."

"Zaragosa…" Reed took a moment to place it. "That in the outer rim?"

"Aye."

"Long way from home, Lima Company is."

"Zaragosa fell."

"Couldn't save it?"

"Wasn't our mission."

"Then what is your mission?"

Reed and Pennington stared each other down and it was Watson who offered respite to the conversation and thus the entire room full of people witnessing it. "...Lima Company volunteered to come here and shore up our defenses." He then turned to the new Captain with what could be perceived as a polite, though suggestive plea. "...And hopefully join us as we advance our boundaries farther out."

Captain Pennington said nothing, only nodded.

With a quick glance at the Spartan, Reed came back with, "Maybe you folks are our salvation after all, then."

Watson added jokingly, "Saving strangers has been fine and all, don't get me wrong. Sometimes, everyone needs a little saving once in a while. No one's above that."

Pennington chuckled but he'd begun to feel the overbearing weariness behind the man's words that were only weakly veiled by his offhand cracks about his superiors, and from the other man, Reed, whose wide-eyed attentiveness and desperate fishing for any kind of good news was painfully obvious. It looked like they'd suffered today. Even though there was a Spartan here to come and help with the situation on the ground they were fixated on issues that were their own. There were hard feelings and bones to pick. It seemed like he'd wandered into a snake pit, but he hadn't been here these past weeks. He couldn't know what they'd been through beyond just catch-up briefings from their commander.

"At any rate, welcome," Reed said.

He was still undecided about the newcomers. He hadn't seen a Spartan in action yet with his own eyes, but if it was between a pelican full of soldiers like the one he'd failed to save, he'd take his own any day. It was illogical, he knew, but her presence didn't salve the disappointment he felt about today's events as much as he knew it should have. And the size of Mombasa, how much of it was contested at the moment and how much of it had to be abandoned simply because there were too few troops in the Battalion that it was for lack of a better word, impossible, to win back. He didn't know how much a single Spartan could actually change things in this quagmire. Ever skeptical he was and sure as hell that hadn't lessened, these three weeks in. And after what he just came back from, it felt like this night and every night after would drag on with or without their aid, like the sun had just burned out. Thinking back to those times Watson had muttered curses under his breath about leadership decisions back at IRIS—back when the situation here started to worsen—and how it felt as though people back there were waiting for the Abby and all its souls to crumble and just break down, give up. That would be easier on everyone, right?

That was just steam, Reed knew, but subconscious out gassings from superiors were credible innuendos from time to time. War is an incredibly nuanced experience, not just the visceral and hard-hitting combat.

But it was Montclair who brought Reed out of his own spiral of doubt, saying, "The Captain and Spartan Oh-Seven-One should be praised for coming this far, taking their people with them. Brought a whole company of fighting marines."

That was true enough. It was said that the ones pulling the strings clear on the other side of the desert plains directed this company of marines to show up here, so it had to mean something. But what? _Newly-formed special warfare unit, okay_. "What's here?" Reed asked Pennington and Amy. The question was incredibly direct and even caught the Lieutenant Colonel off guard, his eyes starting to wander. But it was a loaded question, a test.

The Captain easily deflected it. "Honestly, we were hoping you'd tell us," he replied, looking from Reed to Watson.

Montclair stepped in, said, "Major Wu and Colonel Mattis must've reached out, caught the ear of a flag officer. It's obvious they asked for help. Gotta hand it to them, they went to bat for us."

Reed looked at her as if to ask if that were true.

Pennington was quick to affirm her words. "Our CO, Captain Lawson, he got the note as well. Guess he was convinced."

Pennington wouldn't reveal the true reason they were ordered here. Not yet, at least. There'd be a proper time and place for it, he knew before coming to Mombasa.

Continuing, Pennington said, "Your boss, Colonel Mattis, he spoke with General LeMay and ran it by our chain and then we were on the move. I hope we're in the right place, but it looks like just about anywhere on the ground's all right. I know my NCOs would say that much."

Reed, prior-enlisted, said, "Covie's here. Needs to be stopped, nothing else to do but stop him."

"I'll drink to that," Pennington said.

"Like we talked about in our briefing," Watson said, "we send patrols out on a schedule. I'm thinking you could ride out with them some time. Nothing too glamorous."

"Understood." Amy answered him. "We'll get with your team leaders for the next mission planning session and learn what we can do to help find more survivors."

This drew all eyes onto her.

While Captain Pennington seemed to corroborate her offer with a firm nod, all others of the 906th present stared at her a few seconds as if she were wholly out of place suggesting what she did.

"Lima Company's handled evacuations before," Amy added.

"Not quite sure you can call it that anymore," Montclair said.

"Why's that?"

"See now, you want to leave, all you got to do is call home and Daddy Lawson would swing by and pick you up. My bet is he's got himself a gussied up hotrod, too. Lights up the block. The rest of us, well, we take the bus."

Watson added, "And transit union's on strike."

"First we need to push them back, the Covies," Montclair said. "We believe some of them took notice of our efforts and've been tryin' to get closer, not to mention the zipline back to IRIS has been cut and wheeled convoys across the hardpan have long been outta the picture. Unless you can spring another escort like the size your folks put together, if only to offload our current horde of refugees..."

"They would not be dumb enough to take on a whole battalion occupying entire city blocks worth of spread-out buildings. That would be nothing but suicide," Amy said.

"That's just it." Montclair squinted her eyes at the Spartan's visor, hoping to see beyond the golden glare and connect in a way people were used to. "They don't know we're here, and frankly we'd like to keep it that way."

Following Amy's impassive stare, Montclair gave up at eye contact with her, looked away.

"Correction," Watson said, "they do know we're here but not exactly where. They know the UNSC is doing a hell of a job at recycling its people and equipment, and they're intent to put a stop to that any chance they get. Reports consolidated from all the patrol squads make it clear: they're going to find this hospital eventually. And if all those enemy units posted around our circumference are talking to each other and coordinating, that cuts the time down even more. Quite significantly, actually. We're looking at days in that scenario, not weeks."

Montclair concurred with a firm nod. "Even with that level of escort shepherding your way earlier tonight, no small amount of luck got you here. I believe the only reason we're not all fully engaged at our perimeter this minute is because of that assault carrier they shot down. This right here is a luxury...and we should all be sayin' our thanks to whoever orchestrated that because I don't think we'll be gettin' that lucky ever again."

"Yeah," Pennington drawled out, "about that…"

"So, send out ambush teams to take them down before they can zero this place and report back to their bosses." Amy said. "Lure them in one by one, guerilla style. At the very least, it will buy you some time."

"That's already being done, but they're gaining ground with each person we lose, you see."

"That means you're close. You're coming within thresholds."

Montclair gave a stiff shake of the head, brow furrowed like she took the assessment personally. Admitting that the Battalion was inching closer to a failed mission at a proportional rate to the Covenant's advancements was like suicide itself. Ask any of them and they'd swear by their vows—to self and other—to hold that line. They knew what was at stake for those behind them if they balked under a general order. Offline, in private quarters, maybe she'd let the Spartan continue until she was done, but not here, not now. She mustered a diplomatic sort of cautioning back at her. "Don't assume too much about us."

It was true enough, though.

Reed intently listened in as the Spartan continued.

"It comes down to old-fashioned attrition in my view." Amy furthered her assessments, disregarding the Major's cues either out of conviction or honest unawareness. No one could know because of her smooth, level tone and that opaque stare the helmet gave off. "Supply routes are cut off, both ground and air, and this proxy army of theirs has set up shop in your neighborhood and is expanding. Steady pace, am I right? Once they get your location, they'll most likely just wait you out until you're ripe for a swift, easy attack."

"Not Covie's typical style." Reed said.

Amy replied in an instant, "Depends on who's leading the force."

Reed thought about that a moment.

Could it be possible a very high-ranking officer was coordinating the skirmishes against their teams in the city? Higher than what was necessary?

Most of the fighting had migrated away, the latest intel briefs had suggested prior to them altogether ceasing—when all comms went dark. The city blocks further out were already picked clean, barren, a daily reminder of how mostly-forgotten this place was. Only reason there were still outgoing patrols was to maintain a steady rotation of fresh troops to and from the edge, to maintain the unit's protective sphere (and early warning system) and to welcome friendlies inward, send them on their way to wherever or absorb them if they were uniformed combatants. The one leading this Covie force probably thought the entire area was merely host to UNSC stragglers just trying to bust their way out of a desolate Mombasa and get to where they were needed, or just batten down indefinitely and ride it out. Whether lining the streets with its troops or surgically going building by building, this leader would obviously deny them any escape. Not overly smart, the enemy's tactics were. Shots were traded, both sides took casualties. The Covenant had their usual advantages, but Abby's presence in fact lasted this long and there was still enough real estate and people to repel something fierce should it decide to power through and make a charge against the forward HQ itself if they found it. Total enemy numbers were unknown, but 906th still had a wide radius. Wide enough to position assets in a reasonable timeframe and keep turf controlled, but not so wide that it would be cumbersome to do so.

Though, maybe Watson was onto something. Maybe it was possible the enemy units scattered about on all sides of 906th's defenses were not acting solo—that maybe they were in regular contact and working toward a common objective. Was it just a city-wide manhunt, or it was something more?

Wide, indeed, the 906th line was. The enemy units out there would require comms of their own to be in cahoots across so much distance, and just as well maybe their systems were disabled after the slipspace jump. The two SIGINT soldiers posted here at the Abby never came forth with any news on the matter, never received anything interesting on their scopes, so either Covie was just as blind as 906 or their transmissions were inaudible to UNSC ears. It was easy for Reed to just assume the worst, chalking it up to "superior Covie tech" that was hidden out there but always working against you.

And to think that something like a Zealot or Commando was behind it all was unsettling, if not terribly interesting. He hadn't thought of these things before. The focus was establishing a sphere of control—done—and taking people in to get them safe and where they needed to be—ever a work in-progress.

The Spartan seemed to be a step ahead, brainstorming a more offensive posture for them to consider—something Reed both admired and envied this moment. With ten more like her, he could circumvent all the red tape and win back the entire city. But it was a pipe dream. Even if the unit was endowed with such assets, he knew the OIC would never go for it. Too ambitious and too risky a plan for them. Not properly budgeted for it in any aspect. Reed would get shut down, get told they weren't equipped for that type of sustained conflict and it just wasn't their MO. Some other unit was better-suited for it.

He glanced at Pennington, then at the Spartan who was actually already watching him. He saw his own reflection and it was crystal clear and centered inside that visor.

She must've seen Lieutenant Reed pondering along similar lines as her, continued with, "So, either you all turn the tide or there will be a point when whoever's in charge makes the conclusion that pulling back to IRIS is smarter than staying here. The time to choose is now."

The immediate response to that was nothing.

Total silence.

Montclair glanced sidelong at her superior, that look on her face a curious one—curious if Watson could seriously consider that notion in this hour. Were they at that point? She had an idea of the broad scope but only a fraction of the understanding Watson possessed. The whole thing was dismaying because Spartans—the most respected types of humans in a galaxy full of war—wielded immense implications by words alone. She wouldn't be here weighing in unless she thought it was paramount to UNSC success. Maybe she was just confirming what many of them were slow or too stubborn to acknowledge—the Harbinger of the Abby.

Abandoning the mission was always an option reserved for the highest ranking on-site, but that course of action being taken was one that couldn't be taken back. Once vacated, the hospital—the epicenter of evac operations for most of Mombasa—it would be a fallen star. It was always about more than just the ones doing the saving, Montclair certainly believed. At this point in the battle for Earth it was a symbol, the beacon of hope.

Such a statement was like sacrilege to the Battalion—at least the ones who'd volunteered for assignment here and taken it seriously despite all manner of qualms people had about it after the best was behind them. They had to believe their investment had been paying out after so much loss these past weeks, determined to see the mission yield the righteous dividends—the kind that couldn't be valued against anything else because in the end a life saved was a priceless thing. Montclair's response was cordial nonetheless, if just a little bit punchy in kind. After all, Highwaymen could tolerate an outsider saying something like that. Just barely.

"The insight is appreciated, Spartan. Thank you. Bear in mind we're the ones who'll be lookin' all these people in the eyes when that time comes, _if_ it comes. In the meantime, we don't hide our faces."

A faceless sight, that supersoldier, Montclair couldn't know what Spartan Amy was thinking then.

"Look, if the worst should happen here," Pennington told them, "there'd be contingencies in place. Not just for us. For all."

The 906th soldiers studied Captain Pennington, unsure what exactly he'd meant by that.

Pennington quickly added, "Stakeholders back at IRIS have assured me of this. We may be cut off temporarily but, hell, we're not alone. _We_ got here."

Despite the Captain's quick wit and consolation efforts, this drew only more attention onto him. Everyone in the room knew damn well that his Lima Company was a special asset to be looked after and protected. A full wing of escort craft and a Spartan among them. Exactly why, only two people in the room knew. To openly question this young Captain's motives any further would not be good hospitality, and the Abby hadn't fallen into such a state of affairs...yet. Reed had already prodded him enough and subtleties were just about fully exhausted. At any rate, Montclair was right about the newcomers: they'd been shepherded here in confidence by sheer numbers—a huge gamble to run that kind of presence up and down a failed air corridor despite superiority. But how could anyone in the room not deduce the conundrum taking shape? Lima Company itself had no investment here. Only time would tell what amount of sweat their Captain would have them put into this volunteer effort he'd claimed to.

"Well," Watson spoke to placate his own tribe, "let's continue our discussion as Lima Company gets settled into the Abby and gets a meal." He turned to face the guests. "We'll plan the next mission together and you can tell us in your own opinion if we're falling behind in any particular area. Hopefully you'll be able to lend your expertise in those areas if you feel that we are not ourselves capable."

Reed looked off to the side of the lounge while Montclair and Watson were just about to conclude their chit-chat with the two. Initial goodnights were said, and he knew there'd be at least one follow-up goodnight with the amount of awkwardness lingering. They'd trade war stories, like everyone did or was expected to. For his part, the conversation had lost relevance. It seemed there was nothing more of use to be said. The hospital's spacious and accommodating interior was to him a false sense of security just like the relative calm about the city following the enemy carrier's demise. What had once been fewer and fewer arrivals that needed saving was now becoming a slowly shrinking sphere with Covenant on every tangent just waiting for the right opportunity to close the loop. They needed to be denied that opportunity day in and day out.

Shield Company held the line good and long, but like all Covenant invasions he experienced or studied the enemy was always superior in technology, firepower, and numbers. Seventh still had formidable assets and most importantly turf advantage but territorial exploits against the Covenant were brief, quickly countered within days or hours and eventually suffered loss of effectiveness as with any occupation. His relatively recent Basic Infantry Officer course taught him extensively about battles that devolved into a melee of all against all, with ranged weapons as well as close combat, and how a group's fighting power increases as the square of its size. As much as he hated to admit, the Spartan was correct: his battalion either needed something new or needed to evac because the majority of skirmishes out there were now starting to cost them more and more ground, and more people. Obviously, it wasn't his call to make but he surmised that if they were still here this long it meant they were committed at least a little while longer, and therefore he had to help find a way forward.

Reed stared outward while the others carried on. In what had been left over from the hospital's days as a museum, there was a blown-up aerial photograph of the old city about the size of an entire wall, hung up on the wood paneling and sheathed inside a pane of protective plastic that was yellowing more and more by the day. Comparing satellite imagery of the area, not a lot had changed except that New Mombasa, in the photo, was a fledgling development. The old city, its alleyways, deteriorated streets, ghettos and historic landmarks had been there for a long time—forever, as far as they were concerned.

Over the course of their time in the hospital, soldiers had taken to their own graffiti on the plastic overlay, at first doodles and dicks and even some Kilroy homage, and some squad leader had traced in the day's patrol route before they broke their huddle and headed off. Then a team of logistics personnel had mapped out feasible supply routes (and crossed all of them off) and the air-corridor that cut down the centre with ease—or it used to—was still there as a perfectly straight band of bright, waxy red tape. Nobody had peeled that off yet because then things really did look hopeless. It didn't help either that it became a trend for soldiers to scribble down the names of squad members who were KIA in the city, pinpointing the exact street corner they went down, and soon the pane was riddled with names spread out all over the city, hundreds at least, some in greater clusters than others—like Lake had said, they'd had a few bad days—a growing, tortured scrawl that consumed the placid photograph.

But what made Reed take a few steps down the stairs were circled colour-coded areas of the map he knew to be unit designations. Detachments of Marines and ODSTs that higher ups sent in about the same time as the 906th. They'd fallen out of contact with many of those units because the Covenant had been surgical and snipped away at parts of the city, cutting each unit off until everyone was isolated.

Partly it was luck the hospital and its surrounding area had been stable up to this point, partly it was excellent planning and organization—Shield had dug in its heels and not given an inch until only very recently. The hospital made for a good evacuation centre with its spacious roof and facilities, its location equidistant between the new and old cities, and refugees naturally gravitated towards the area. When 1st Battalion came to the scene initially, it was already full of people in the midst of packing up their lives, looking for anywhere to hide because Dr. Faroush had welcomed them all in and promised them protection and life's necessities. It had been the Marines and ODSTs' job to repel the Covenant invaders and establish safe routes to evacuation centres for refugees and now _they_ were just as scattered, themselves showing up at the hospital piecemeal so they could be whisked away to safety and back to war eventually. Even stragglers searching for their chain of command were sent to the IRIS site and thrown back into the blender but they usually ended up away from Mombasa, maybe somewhere on the road to Voi. It was as if everyone forgot about Mombasa or liked to pretend there was nothing left here so they didn't need to think about it that much. The beeline back to IRIS was the key—it ceasing to function seemed to be the final nail in the coffin. And soon they'd all suffocate.

But those unit markers, Reed noticed, dotted a colourful highway (another scrapped supply route) that traveled through the city. It had been abandoned in planning, presumably because the Covenant had cut it off just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The logistician had crossed out the road and thrown his marker at the floor and given up.

Reed looked back at the senior leadership, Watson and Montclair, and said, "We need a way out, right? Keep people moving so they don't all get bunched up here? Think I found it."

They stopped talking and focused on the lieutenant. He paced quickly to the foot of the aerial map and craned his neck to take it all in, eyes navigating the network of roads. He said to them, "Groundwork's all here. Just need to put in the hours."

Watson said, "You're going to need to explain this one to us, Lieutenant. What are we looking at?"

"Air-corridor cut clean through everything, didn't it?" Reed said. "Some of these roads, they're... all over the place. The routes zig and zag because of prior engagements or even just sightings; Covie might be hiding here or there. So these lines, they sometimes go wide to avoid danger. Sure we have satellites and drones at our disposal but Covie is wont to surprise us, and every time our people go out that far there's a chance they'll run into things unforeseen. Too much of a damn chance."

"So we adapt. We always do," Watson said.

"There's a very fine line between adapting and playing catch up. You can get pulled into that pitfall of always taking two steps forward and three back, don't catch onto that until it's just too late. Need to be wise about where and how we commit force." Reed chewed on his lip. "We can tell Mattis and Wu all's fine, Shield's doing god's work out here, all we want. And maybe we are faring better than the Marines and ODSTs, but it's plain we all know we're still a leaky body. Not hemorrhaging, but we're a slow death away. The air-corridor made us dependent, like someone needs his fix. Well, we're cut off. Maybe Mattis _is_ sick of our mission, wants us to move out and leave him and Mumma Wu alone, but I don't think he's leaving us for dead. We have all the tools we need to build a raft off this desert island and this here's a roadmap."

Reed looked around the bottom of the display pane, searching for something. Montclair produced a marker from her breast pocket and flipped it over to him. With it in hand, he reached up and began to highlight the route he had in mind for everyone to see.

Watson stared at it, thinking it over. "Just off the top of my head, Lieutenant, you're taking us into untamed land—Covie country. Even if we had eyes on, how the hell do we get guys out there to help if or when something goes awry?"

"We'll be there every step of the way. Route will be clear, we'll be certain of that. And it'll run like clockwork. No waiting for the skies to clear, no rain checks. Just a freeway up and down the line."

Watson turned and said to Montclair, half a smirk on his face, "Tell me he didn't hit his head today."

Montclair didn't take her eyes off Reed. "Likely he did."

"Lieutenant," Watson said, "we're a battalion, remember."

"We're more than that, sir."

"We can barely manage the city blocks we've got. You'd need nothing short of an army."

Reed pointed at Pennington. "You said you had numbers on your side today, right? Only reason we're closed for business is 'cause we don't." He circled the colour-coded unit designations of Marines and ODSTs dispersed throughout the map. "There's your army."

Watson said, "I admire that optimism, Lieutenant, but you're forgetting one thing... they're out of contact. They're broken. Covies overran their positions weeks ago—only we remain on firm ground."

"They got pushed. They didn't get wiped—a fact I'm sure of. They're still in the city and the city still has structures so we have to assume they're holding some kind of ground 'cause they got nothing else to do but fight for their lives," Reed said. "It's what we would have done."

A sobering silence.

"It's almost what we're doing now. And it's happening every day out there. We just have more people and tools to make it last as long as it has. You might even say those troops out there that ain't ours have been bearing the brunt of the war, softening it up before it makes its way toward us."

Watson couldn't argue with that and Montclair didn't want to. The Lima Company members too were fixated on Reed's spur of the moment proposal.

In that free moment, Reed said, "They're out there, same as the civvies we're trying to bring back. We just need to find 'em, reposition 'em... let 'em know they're not alone out here, and we'll keep them supplied and oiled if they meet us halfway—help them's who want to be helped. City's dangerous, sure, and it'll cost us to get to 'em, but when we do the gains will outweigh those costs—that I believe. Hell, they sent a Spartan." He looked at Amy. "You want to make a difference in Mombasa? Slice off Covie's hands he's got 'round us and put a dagger through his fuckin' heart." To the others he said: "Let this be it. Let's unite us. All of Mombasa, East and West."

The corners of his eyes creasing with realization, maybe even reverence, Watson said, "Railroads of old closing the frontier."

Reed turned back to the wall, satisfied. He could work with that. "Abby will be the grand hub: everything comes to us just as planned, all corners of the city if they got to, and IRIS—" The command base was not in the photograph, but Reed ran his marker off the northwest edge of the pane anyway, an escape free and clear of Mombasa and its clutter of names of the deceased and those angry, crossed out lines of failed plans and the encroaching Covenant forces strangling them here, this perilous place. He stepped back to look at his work with a resolute smile. "—IRIS will be the end of the line."

* * *

While Reed spoke to the senior leadership one floor below, Captain Stern leaned over the sculpted marble railing in one of the many stonework alcoves that overlooked the whole lounge, cigarette pinched in his fingers. Fearless, untouchable Fraser waltzed right up and joined him, clasping her sooty hands together as she leaned on the railing too.

"I'm hitched to a new man, Skipper," she said to him. "Big and strong, he rescued me away from a hard knock life, oh lawdy yes he did."

"So I heard."

"You were asking after me?"

"I did wanna know why it was you weren't at your post. Gettin' a tan. Breakin' bricks."

"Would you have watched me toil away?" Fraser wiggled her eyebrows. "You would, you sadist. You missed me."

"Maybe I damned well jumped for joy when I heard that Reed whisked you away to go play in Mombasa traffic. You and the rest of Suicide-Club. Maybe I did a little dance. You think about that?"

"I know you didn't."

"Why not?"

"'Cause you're old and creaky."

Stern laughed. It was a rare sound, truly, but Fraser had heard it before—he'd let her hear it. She liked it, maybe even loved it. He said with a tiny shake of his head, "Fuckin' Doll Fraser blowing back through my little town. I thought I got rid of you for good this time."

"I couldn't stay away, my lovely."

"You want round two, that it?"

"You never know. But you can rest easy tonight because I am going to be enjoying my freedom while I have it—I worked hard for it, believe it or not."

"That'll be the day."

"I'm serious. Woman of the hour. Ask Reed."

"Oh I know better than to do that," Stern said. "Thick as thieves, you two rabble-rousers. It's collusion all the way down. If I'm smart I'll stay far, far away, thanks."

"We're amazing, _thanks_ ," Fraser scoffed. "You'll see, old-timer. We'll whip this unit back into shape, me and Reed. Your beloved Shield's on its way out. It'll eat you up to know."

"Can't say I'm too concerned," Stern said. "There's two ways soldiers like you and Lieutenant Reed end up: in chain-gang or dead."

"Give me that." Fraser inaudibly snapped her fingers at Stern's cigarette. He passed it over and she said, "Now, me, I rattled your pearly whites not long ago—"

"Don't think I've forgiven you just yet."

"—but what did mean old Reed ever do to you?"

She took a drag while he said, "Look at you, looking for prime kiss'n'tell to get your rocks off."

"Mm." (Expectant; go on.)

Stern paused a moment. "Recon has its lead man."

Fraser blew out her breath. "One who isn't named Reed."

"Need no other. Company can run without him, is all."

When he said no more, Fraser said lightly, "And me, apparently."

"Especially you. You're lazy and you're a drunkard."

"Guilty on both counts. What else?"

"And you're goddamn proud of it all, ain't you."

"Got me again." Fraser grinned.

"And still you're walking around here like you're doused in flames and this place's got a roof like tinder, and you don't see the problem. And I think you never will. You go where you want because Doll Fraser gets her way, nobody else matters."

Fraser's smile had faded. "I've a right to be here. I belong here. You kicked me out."

"Over nothing that wasn't your own fault."

"Did I knock the other half of that story out your skull? You're just as much to blame."

"Yeah, I got a real piece of you—got your poor knuckles real hard with my chin. It's boney, I been told."

"That's not what I'm talking about."

"Nothing else needs to be said. Isn't that what we agreed? Just blow on through, Fraser, blow on through and keep going," Stern said. "I know you. This place isn't anything to you. Just somewhere to lay low for a while. Nothing's changed. You haven't changed."

She said slowly, "Yeah you've got me figured out. Same old Fraser, fucking up everything, right as always, James." She took a resigned step back from the railing.

He didn't turn around. "The hell you going?"

"I've got a reputation to uphold, Skipper. I don't want to disappoint. I'm going to find myself a drink and laze around like old times, go looking for trouble. Saw that coming, didn't you? Me, fucking up? But look, I'm a forgive 'n forget sort of gal. Big on the forgetting part. If I'm lucky I'll forget this conversation ever took place, my name and everything else tonight. Then if you want to try your luck, you know where to find me. You always did. 'Coz that'll be the only way."

Fraser left Stern with his wet and dumpy cigarette and about a hundred things he wanted to say back, cruel words and words like I'm sorry—maybe all of those things but especially that. Sullenly and silently, though, he just watched her descend the staircase with her swaggery, outlaw walk, her oversized boots clomping carefree on the scuffed marble surface all the way down.

* * *

In a dim section somewhere deep inside the hospital, Dr. Lea Faroush punched in a four digit pass code on a secure door and slipped into the room. It looked like a storage closet with its shelves full of old hospital equipment and boxes of old forgotten paperwork. Faroush approached the man who sat in the back at a desk, head bowed in concentration. He was a nurse called Button and he was in the process of counting and sorting pills, weighing them, scribbling down their values and punching figures into a calculator.

Faroush put her hands on his shoulders. "Relations are improving with Watson. I'll have a request put in for an inventory bot."

He merely shrugged, kept on working.

"How are things?" she asked him.

"Considering what we've had to deal with, it's still better than nothing."

"Do we need to put a hold on this?"

Button looked over his notes and said, "Not just yet. Word is a lot of supplies never made it here this time, and they've always been haphazard about exact amounts leaving the base on their end. Surplus amounts. This just makes things easier. Nobody will miss it because they'll never know it was here—that it wasn't tossed with the rest."

"Can I see?"

Button handed her a vial. It was sealed up and the label declared it to be antibiotics, whatever wonder-drug that cured the sick and dying only a doctor would know.

"They would have dumped it," Button reported, "but our guys were there. They saved it from going over. It was quick thinking."

Faroush scrutinized its contents under the light, but she was satisfied with just reading the label that declared it to be UNSC-issued property. While it was intended for the Army doctors for use on military personnel, Watson had been good about sharing and there were many more boxes of medicine in Faroush's possession just like the one she was holding in the hospital's stores—those belonged to Abigail Aki Memorial and that was the way it would stay: for use by all that the hospital's protection extended to, military and civilian both.

This particular vial she held was different though. It didn't come from Watson, it was not bestowed upon her in some grand diplomatic gesture, that waltz they did. And thus it belonged to Dr. Faroush, not the hospital. It is important to make that distinction.

"The asking price did go up three-fold, however," Button said. "You've got final say."

"I expected as much." Faroush pondered for a moment. "If there really are no more supplies from the military base coming our way, we'll need to be especially careful with how we manage what we have. We'll likely need to open up our stores to the soldiers if their doctors run out in the coming days." She tapped the vial with a fingernail. "If there's more of this, Adam, exactly this—kept under the table, of course—we pocket it. Give them what they ask for. Incentivize them."

The man nodded. No skimming necessary this time, no futzing with numbers for their fair share—not that they were under any scrutiny by Watson's people though, they had more important things to worry about. He passed her a list, an inventory. "I already did the math. Here's what's going out, then."

Faroush skimmed it. Painkillers of all kinds. She had no pretensions about what this was for—good times and fleeting happiness, to be chewed and swallowed, smashed up and snorted, however way they wanted to get it inside their bodies and brains. The hospital had an overabundance of these over-the-counter drugs and despite the disproportionate deal she'd just okayed, the fact was it'd barely put a dent in their stock. The current reality was favorable in the most critical aspect: soldiers' requirements in those life-or-death situations were to a significant degree sustainable all on their own thanks to basic, standard-issue items. Field-injectables had improved leaps and bounds in just the previous decade alone. Lightweight, portable, expanding to quadruple their original form in the presence of air, UNSC 'biofoam' was the medical staple of the infantry unit. She handed the list back to Button and said, "All's fine."

They could have ended up with nothing if it weren't for the ever-present need to maintain that destructive, uncontrollable hunger that existed in many of the fighting men. Those antibiotics had proven too valuable a cargo to abandon somewhere over Mombasa because the fear of not being able to experience that bliss that took them momentarily away from this place was too great. She wouldn't play hard-ball with them and hold their desires hostage. She'd reward those who delivered medicine to her especially after today's disaster, who could still deliver to her in these desperate days when there was no readily available source now that the air route was cut off. It was only fair. As far as she was concerned, the soldiers needed their hazy escape more than her people or the refugees in her care did, having to deal with that kind of stress. It was a mercy, really. But nothing came free, so they would trade. Their medicine for our drugs, that's how it was from the start. She didn't ask questions about where it came from, but she knew. She knew everything that was going on in her hospital.

There'd be a time when all of this would pay off—of that she was certain. All the signs were there and she'd made promises to herself a lifetime ago that needed to be kept and now was ideal—the world was coming to an end soon.

* * *

Lake found Reed sitting on a waiting-room chair down a hallway, studying the design of the wallpaper opposite him, lips partly moving, like he was trying to read something out loud but there was nothing there. He looked up at her as she strolled towards him.

"You look like you're in trouble," she said.

"Well I am, kinda," he said.

Lake didn't follow.

"Dog Company CO's a couple doors down," he explained. "I gotta tell him about the guys who died, who rode out with me today. Their names were McCarthy, Wells, and Delonge. The latter two, they were with us since before Cassandra. I didn't know that 'til an hour ago. I didn't know them when they got shot. I certainly don't know them now."

"From disciplinary, right? Didn't think Dog was their home—Ovarsson wouldn't take it too hard, would he?"

"They were in Dog when they died, goes on the books that way," Reed said bluntly. "They were his, and they were mine. Captain said take anyone you want, if they wanted. Only one who did."

"They wanted to go," Lake pointed out.

"I know. But I've had better days, run better ops."

"Worse ones, too. Don't carve out your gut in shame on me now. Casualty count high as it is I'm running out of people I actually like."

"Stop trying to cheer me up—make light."

"Sure, but I meant what I said."

"I'm dealing. This one's on me. They died in Mombasa and for what I don't know. Trying to come up with an explanation I guess. Still working on it."

"Can I wish you good luck in there?"

"I'll allow it." Reed took a breath and stood, all nerves. He'd long lost them in combat funnily enough. He was not prepared for this.

Lake nearly walked by him but she stopped and turned. She said, "Third Squad just got back home. Don't know if you heard. They brought back fourteen people with them—refugees. A family, among them. Three little brats, the whole thing. Can't believe they lasted this long."

"Might say that makes up for the boys who died today," Reed said. "Might not."

"You know, it'd better," Lake said. "Because why the hell else are we here? We're from line companies, you and me. There's a man—I'll let you guess as to who it was—who told me some time ago that we were good for one thing and one thing only... what we're here to do in this war. Just to kill, he told me. Just to die. All we're here for, just... death. And he's not wrong. More than that, he's pretty much right. Because there's been a lot of it. It's been a long year and nobody's okay. And I don't doubt there's more of it to come.

"But out of all the shit we do because we have to, this time I'd like to believe we're coming out ahead, you know? Adding to the count, not taking away. And that's the mission. The real mission. Nothing more to it than that, and to me it feels... _right_. Like there's nowhere else we're supposed to be so here we are. No matter how much they kill us, how much they take away from us, we're still here. Maybe that's just me. I could be crazy, but maybe I wanna hear it from you that I'm not."

Reed just stared at her with a contented look spreading throughout his face and said nothing for a long while. She didn't walk away or anything and he was glad she didn't.

 _Hi, Lake._ There you are. Still here.

 _Reed._ She smiled.

God he could have stood here forever. Days like today.

"Fourteen's a good number," Reed said.

END OF EPISODE

35,450 words


	2. Part 2

**Ten Days in Mombasa**

By Electromotive Force and Mr. 125

 **Part** **2**

 **"The Unstable Element"**

It had been calm and quiet their first night in.

Captain Pennington and his company of marines were given quarters along with the strong chance of a full night's rest in light of the latest intel. They'd settled in quickly, arrived to Mombasa with only what they carried. Once boredom set in, most troops took to touring the hospital—whichever areas were unrestricted anyway. The Abby, as permanent residents called it, was as well-oiled of a machine as it possibly could be by first appearances. People were rarely seen idle, there was always something to do. Only once you were fully attuned to the day-to-day grind of it all did you understand the true nature of its struggle and the shortcomings that would at times bring life-or-death consequences to its less-fortunate patients. Lima knew what hustle and bustle was, but they couldn't know about everything that went on here, about everything that'd already happened.

Most of Lima Company had already dispersed throughout the complex as Pennington stepped out of his room which was twice the size of every other—a suite that would have been reserved for a visiting senior officer or dignitary of some sort. Partly it was because he and the Spartan were sharing that room. It was a twenty by twenty, a solid half-wall that bisected it for some privacy. Separate bathrooms for each and a common kitchenette. Most importantly, the military-grade safe inside—a solid Titanium set of drawers with thirty millimeter thickness. No one would be getting inside of it unless they had a few good minutes and some incredible tools and know-how. The device stored within was invaluable, they knew. Worth more than any Earth-city and just about any human life. The marine hesitated before setting off for a quiet walkabout of his own. She was there standing watch over it. She'd never take her sight off it, even while it was in his possession. He'd spent a good couple of minutes convincing her to let him wander off alone. With a bit of apprehension, she relented, let him be.

Pennington strolled down the perimeter of a wide, rectangular piazza deep inside the Abby, taking in the sights. What used to be a broad and high-vaulted courtyard was now a makeshift staging point for supplies, ammunition chiefly among it all. Once-tended gardening had been squashed by giant pallets and freight containers—only stringy, yellow squares remaining where they'd once been parked before being staged to a better-situated patch. The central playground had long outlived its usefulness since the opening hours of the Covenant invasion and had been scattered and relocated to the far ends, pushed out of the way. Giant forklifts and robotic loaders dominated a one-hundred-meter section of perimeter, parked just off a few of the suites. Pennington imagined that maintaining a decent sleep schedule here was out of the question with near-constant traffic like this, their growling engines and backup sirens and all.

He found a break in the maze of stacked crates and crossed the turf, reaching the other side of the piazza where a wide archway led the path beneath the Abby's main support columns and into the subterranean garages. He was told earlier by one of the orderlies that he could gain access to a break room by taking the staircase about midways down the dark driveway. He could score a light snack there since full meals were now rationed and not available this hour of the night. After a five-minute walk, he ascended the narrow flights and opened one of the doors leading to that hallway they'd mentioned. Only one passerby was seen, and she greeted him with an extremely casual nod. Few formalities withstood this place.

Another door and he was met with the sight of a couple young soldiers sitting down at a wooden table huddled over some coffee and cigarettes. It was an out-of-the-way place, one surely meant for military personnel only. It was small, cramped even, with only two tables and three chairs total, an oven and a fridge taking at least half the space—both in need of maintenance with the way they hummed on line power. But it was indeed low-key. It was the perfect place for someone or a small group to visit before or after the unit's more dreaded missions. A tight-knit squad or a couple of buddies who came up in the ranks together or lovers that had crashed into one another out of desperation at some point in the War. The two currently there in front of the Captain were talking things over, one of them the listener while the other poured out words over that steaming cup. They didn't acknowledge Pennington and he nevertheless tried not to be noticed just as well even as he squeezed past the back of one's chair. He'd normally say something like _pardon me_ but even that would rile them up, he felt.

In a small basket atop the fridge, the Captain found some fruit which was surprisingly untainted. Lucky spot in the most recent supply run, maybe. That, or there were hydroponics somewhere deeper within Abby's real estate. A bright, waxy clementine and a handful of dates and he was back to sliding past them with hardly a rustle of clothing on the way out.

In the hallway headed to the main entrance, another passerby loomed.

"Can't sleep, Captain?"

Pennington looked on as he closed the door behind him, remembered the voice as one from earlier.

"Thought I'd get to know my surroundings, Lieutenant."

"That's good. Not the insomnia part, but I like your initiative."

Pennington settled on that and resumed his journey. The hallway was dark, maybe intentionally so. The captain couldn't quite make out Reed's face at the other end, but knew it was him.

"Was thinking by now that insomnia's just a regular experience around here." Pennington hoped that was the last word as he neared with a steady pace.

"Indeed, you'll come to find out. So, you want to get a _real_ tour your first night?"

Pennington stepped closer, though not to stay and chat.

Reed was in the way.

Pennington shoved a few dates in his mouth while making for the end of the hall, twisting his torso to one side so as to impart his passage beyond the man.

Reed didn't move.

Now they were face to face and Pennington could see the lieutenant's eyes very clearly. He couldn't quite place the Army officer's current demeanor. Was it confrontational? Something he might've said to him earlier that grated at already frayed nerves? The man had obviously been through some heavy action and was more than deserving of rest, but to Pennington it seemed that chance came and went long ago either by choice or by circumstance. Maybe both.

He stared at the man a bit more and perceived quite an unexpected glimmer of exuberance like he was some kid fresh out of Basic rocking a newfound swagger and a lust for Covvie blood.

"Eh?" Reed said. "How 'bout it, Captain?"

Pennington stowed the leftover fruits into a cargo pocket and said, "Who'd be tonight's tour guide?"

"Yours truly."

Pennington, only having just touched down, hadn't planned on taking part in anything so informal, so unscripted. Watson was his contact here, only really needed to liaise with him particularly. Lawson made that clear. It was the precondition coming here, in fact. _Confer directly with Lieutenant Colonel Watson at first opportunity. All else is tertiary._

Pennington figured this was no chance encounter with Reed—the soldier had been searching for the marine this night, got lucky and found him. Suspicious as this situation was, the junior officer's presence inside the hallway was immovable. Pennington couldn't avoid this conversation.

"And where would this tour be going?"

"Out and about. You know, take stock of the situation on the ground. Gotta hog all to ourselves down below."

"Outside the wire?" Pennington seemed apprehensive.

"You know what they say about coming to new towns. Best way to learn your surroundings is to get lost in them."

Pennington then detected some sort of wily look in Reed's eyes. They were wide open and beckoning Pennington's response—total agreement seemingly the only choice.

"It'd mean alot to me." He added in an instant. "You already made a big first impression. How about it, then? A chance to make your intentions known. Could mean a lot to the whole battalion, too."

Pennington smiled a bit, reminded of earlier, zanier days. He actually thought about taking up Reed's offer knowing he shouldn't, and though he'd never freely admit it Reed reminded him of his old NCOIC, the gunnery sergeant who could face anything and be anything. A man's man, the die-hard soldier type who'd win the day if everyone would just let him. But it wasn't so simple as much as anyone would like to think, both for reasons of his own and of others that were way above his head. Lawson might very well disown him for placing himself in needless, avoidable danger. Though the Transit was in safe keeping, he felt naked without it. And he had a whole company to think about, no longer just himself.

Pennington couldn't avoid the potency of Reed's stare, though—that sturdy, in-your-face presence that compelled respect or acknowledgement at the very least. And mere acknowledgement wouldn't be suffered lightly. He felt a sort of fraternal obligation to the man in this silent moment (going on two now) even though he hardly knew him, like this was someone who truly knew what it was to bleed and to give and to keep on bleeding—just as anyone in Lima Company knew. Enlisted could smell their own.

"It's idling."

Pennington swiftly blurted out, "Alright," careful to make sure he didn't sound like he was relenting out of annoyance or pity, "let's go then."

Wordless, Reed turned and led the way to the staircase.

In truth to himself, it was easy for Pennington to go along with Reed. Both prior-enlisted, they were prone to the occasional impulses which more disciplined officers would never entertain. Neither of them were academy grad material, obviously.

* * *

The hog coasted down the length of a wide avenue well within the safe zone of the Abby. Pennington glanced back and saw HQ get smaller and smaller. He looked around: this area of Mombasa made it through the War relatively unscathed. Most of these outlying structures were occupied and they could probably hear the vehicle passing by from the insides despite full exhaust baffling restraining the vehicle's true potential, a stealth feature ever-present right up until the accelerator was floored. Pennington wondered if this was a scheduled run or not.

Inside the warthog, there was nothing other than the two of them. The tri-barreled fifty was there mounted to its pedestal, but it was useless since there was no ammunition present. Reed had only his sidearm, and Pennington his. They were essentially naked.

"How far out are we headed?"

Reed glanced at Pennington, smiled and shook his head. "We're not really going out there. I was just tryin' to get a read on you, that's all. I've been called many things by many people, but stupid wasn't on that list."

Pennington relaxed a bit at that. "Or suicidal. So where are we really going?"

"Just cruising. Checking out some of our outposts, making the rounds. Sometimes it's good for the troops to see your face. I don't have to elaborate to you."

Pennington nodded.

"And," Reed continued, "because I wanted to speak at you alone. Look, I'm a straight talker. I don't hold things back. Can't afford to in this unit. Now, when my troops see a Spartan for their first time right among them, it gets them thinking. I'm sure you know where I'm going with this."

"Sort of, maybe. I thought a bunch of things when I first came into Lima Company."

"You've made a statement whether you know it or not. And not everyone interprets that statement the same."

"They can think what they want to."

"And I want them all thinking one thing. Any clarity you lend there is much appreciated."

To Pennington, that came off as a suggestion. If he was in the same major command or just in the same branch of service to the UNSC, he felt that statement might've been worded even more suggestively.

"Everyone has ideas of what they're capable of." Reed continued. "Everyone's heard the stories. But everyone knows only a little, and naturally they all get to wondering what a Spartan is doing here. I know you and others have said your bosses basically ordered you here, but what's really going on? Don't fuck with me, either."

"Well, I'm here to advise Watson on command matters, mostly. Lima Company is mine to lend out to this battalion. It's that simple."

With pursed lips, Reed nodded while glancing over at the marine captain. And an awkward moment of silence pervaded as the hog continued at a leisurely pace.

"I'll buy that, odd as it seems."

"Why's that odd?"

"A captain advising a lieutenant colonel on matters he's not familiar with, that's all."

"I would tell it to you just like I would tell it to Watson himself. Word came from all our bosses and I'm the relay man since all your long-haul comms are down at the moment. If none of it sits right with you, well, I'm sure it'll all come to light sooner or later and like everyone else you can arrive at your own conclusions. I'm not here to soothe-say."

Again, Reed nodded at the Captain and refocused back to the road ahead.

"So what makes Lima Company so damned special they get a Spartan?"

"Well—"

"—So I scanned your CNI back in the hall. Lima Company's parent organization is SWORD Command, whatever that is. No HQ location, no Unit Identifier Code, just nothing much at all. Acronym isn't even spelled out."

Reed snickered when he knew Pennington was looking at him.

"Like I said earlier, we're a—"

"—Newly-formed unit, yeah, I'm tracking. What is it you do?"

"Reed..." Pennington let out an awkward chuckle like someone was tickling his sides and was starting to cross his pain threshold. "C'mon, ease up a bit. You said we were just making the rounds out here. I'll help out with that but I've got things to tend to myself."

Reed fell silent, though continued taking glimpses at Pennington. A smile materialized like he was enjoying this round of query. He tried once more, saved the best for last.

"What kind of marine unit employs scientists?"

This question seemed to cross the line, Pennington's jaw fully clenched. But it was the only indicator of his demeanor. The marine still had that calm quality to his voice when he replied, "I can only say it's classified much higher than what anyone in Nine-oh-sixth is cleared to."

"Fine. It's cool, man. We have some civilians working with us too. Though, not _here._ They work at brigade level. At IRIS. Just helping with technician duties, mostly. Had no problems signing waivers and doing a tour out there since they're all prior-service themselves, but I can't say we've ever had the luxury of working with no damn scientists. What's it like?"

"I know what you're doing. You're not going to get me to talk about it."

"Alright, fair enough. I can respect exigencies as much as any other officer." Another moment of silence passed with only the hog's engine letting out a steady growl as knobby tires crunched over cratered asphalt. The landscape had suddenly turned. The surrounding structures were pulverized heaps, barely recognizable from what they'd once been—a clear demarcation of where the 906th's pushback swiftly ended the Covenant's advancements further inward. Reed said, "Then I guess you being here makes us special too. Maybe we'll find out more about each other as we battle these streets. And make no mistake, we will be fighting. This is just the calm before."

At that, Pennington nodded, satisfied that another round of poking and prodding was over with—though he knew this wouldn't be the last of it.

"Up ahead is what we call the sub-Apex, where we send runners to and from the front in case the Apex further up gets a little too much noise. Think of it as Nine-oh-sixth's check valve against all the shit getting flushed towards us."

Reed slowed the Hog to just about a crawl and Pennington looked around.

"Which building?"

Reed parked the Hog. "All of them."

The street dead-ended right in front of them, yielding to a wide colonnade through which a piazza peeked through. Short-rise apartment buildings (what was left of them) sprouted up on all sides of this courtyard.

Reed dismounted and Pennington did the same.

"Apex site gets overrun, it'll at least give these troops at the SA a chance to detect that and haul ass back to the Abby to report it in time. Ever since we lost comms, this is our SOP." Reed spat, "We've been knocked back into the fucking stone age."

"Not one working radio?"

"Two working radios. One for Montclair and one for the red zone patrol."

Pennington nodded. "Makes sense, I guess."

"Of course, the people who were inside the Abby when the slipspace launch happened still have short-wave comms, the ones woven into the uniform. And we had enough spares to see to it that most of us still have the original capability. They can piggyback off any standard-issue amplifier if there's one nearby and not damaged like just about fucking _all_ of them. Otherwise, range is pretty shit within these city blocks. Vehicle comms were luckily unaffected but their range isn't the greatest, either. Out this far, it's a gamble so we just go through the motions hoping someone hears us...but it's never the case. Anyways, patrols do radio back some interesting stuff every time they go outside the wire, so I'm told. They require the long-range comms more than anyone else. As long as these defenses hold, we can keep sending those guys out and keep them gaining intel. Gotta keep the routes back home holding or they might not ever return."

"So this is where patrols depart from?"

"Not just here. There's Apex sites elsewhere around our circumference. They don't all look exactly the same, but they function as such."

Reed led the way forward, letting out a loud whistle. He shouted, "All clear!"

Not three seconds after he called, two soldiers strolled out from behind cover to greet them.

"Good to see you again sir," said a corporal, exchanging handshakes with Lieutenant Reed.

The other, a lower enlisted, kept vigil on the way behind them, saying, "Howdy, LT."

"Private, how you holding up?"

"Fine. Bored as fuck. Who's visiting?"

"This here is Captain Pennington, from uh, SWORD Command. Came in from IRIS a bit earlier. Leads Lima Company."

The men said nothing, nodded and stepped aside.

Reed gestured at Pennington and together they proceeded through the row of Corinthian columns leading into the broad courtyard. Footfalls echoed off hard stone and into the many alcoves leading toward lobbies below which hundreds or thousands of people once lived. It was dead quiet save for their passage into the center expanse. There, near a defunct fountain was a cluster of soldiers standing in circular formation, their voices low. One of them must've noticed Reed on approach when all of them turned to face him.

Reed waved them off before any of them could offer formalities. "Status?" Reed asked.

"No contact since last engagement, sir." Replied a brawny NCO leading the unit. "They're dead quiet, but my money is saying they're still out there.

Reed shifted a pace or two and craned his neck for a glance a couple blocks ahead, noting that the next set of mid-rise buildings were indeed still there. "How bad of a beating did the Apex take?"

"Not too bad. Walls are still thick enough to endure plenty more plasma shots. No one got injured, amazingly. I think it's just hipfire. Trying to get us flustered like always."

"Alright then," Reed said, "make sure to flank out a bit. Don't let them see you all bunched up in your favorite spots. They _will_ side-step enough buildings to find a hole, loop right around and bite you in the ass even if it takes them a whole week to do it. You boys need anything? How's ammo? How's food?"

Of course, Reed would've gotten wind of any supply requirements from the outlying sites if any of them had fallen short. True, it ran like clockwork and Reed rarely had to get directly involved—there were plenty of enlisted to keep the gears well greased. This was his opportunity to see for himself personally if there were any special requirements, if there was any caring he had to do for his own that was better kept low-key and off the books.

"And how's...rations?"

"Goodies will probably run low in about three days. We'll be in need of a special delivery shortly after."

"Alright. Good report. I think we'll check out the Northern quadrant for a while. They were the last site to get action. Gentlemen…"

Reed and Pennington withdrew.

* * *

It had been a forty-five minute drive from one end of the battalion's sphere to a spot 180-degrees out. More like a semi-civil jaunt. Reed could've cut the time shorter using alternate routes, but purposely he chose to kill time. Of course the marine captain wouldn't have known any better, he didn't know the terrain. Maybe in a few days he'd come to the realization that Reed was literally taking him for a ride, maximizing his time alone with him, asking questions the way he did. At the last leg of this journey, Reed had just about worn Pennington down, silence now dominating their moments together. On final approach to another Apex site, they could both see the smoke rising in the light of earliest dawn beyond the last row of mid-rise structures. It was thick and black and not something to be taken lightly. Then, a crack of thunder. They glanced at one another and Reed floored the accelerator.

It was a straight shot to where the wavering column of smoke had risen, only another two kilometers to go when lights in the distance shone right at them, flickering on/off with every bump and dip in the pavement. Hogs, two of them on approach. As they came to within friendly distance, Reed knew they weren't slowing down for anything. The gunner in the back of the lead vehicle was standing, waving frantically at Reed and Pennington.

As the two approaching hogs sped past at top speed, Reed could hear the words clearly as they blasted in the opposite direction, doppler effects and all, "Apex is gone! Fuck outta here!"

"Fuck." Reed hissed. He slammed the brakes and the accelerator simultaneously and hooked the hog to the left in a sharp power slide, righting it around to follow the group that had just departed.

With no ammo in the back, Reed's hog gained speed and closed in on the other vehicles. Reed began flashing his high beams at them and they began to slow soon after. He pulled up alongside the trailing car just after they stopped completely, nearly all passengers craning their sights far beyond Reed's incoming silhouette to check for any hostile activity closing in.

"So if the Apex got taken and you all made it this far, we can assume the Sub got taken too."

Bitter words, but they were likely the truest. They all nodded.

"Orders, sir?" The driver asked.

"Remind me, Sergeant, from which checkpoint did the last patrol depart?"

"...Ours."

Reed knife-handed toward the Abby. "One hog back to the HQ to send for reinforcements. That patrol unit needs to make it back home. We are _not_ losing that sector. The rest of us will set up shop here, wherever there's cover. When they find out there's no resistance beyond the SA, they'll pour in everything they got and won't stop. How many of them?"

"Just a squad, but they were god damned surgical, sir."

Another replied, "Camo'd Brutes, LT. It's real bad. They tore those guys to fucking pieces!"

"You get to the Abby, _now._ Everyone else, get some positioning. Disperse!" Before anyone could set off, Reed then said, "Pennington, get on that hog back to HQ. If you wanted to engage any of your troops, now's the time. A Spartan in the fight would also be quite swell."

Pennington nodded and ran to the return vehicle. As soon as he mounted, it sped off toward the Abby.

Reed saw them all off before darting into an alleyway. Another moment and someone parked the two remaining hogs a block further behind, far enough to be out of sight but close enough to pull them and their fifty-cals back into the coming fight. The rest of the men were gathered in the street just beyond and watching for movement past the intersection. He slid in behind them—the noise of his boots on loose gravel right nearby caused some to jerk their heads up and fingers to flit inside their trigger guards. They were spooked.

"Easy, boys," Reed said. He glanced around. "Would feel a whole lot safer with my hands on a rifle."

One sergeant whom Reed didn't know leaned back and passed his over without a word. Reed nodded his thanks and said he'd give it back after all this but the man looked like he didn't believe him. He looked like he was past believing those things people said, things like see you on the other side. Reed could tell. And it was true enough: the notion of surviving what was coming was just an embellishment—even the younger among them would know that.

There was a submachine-gun by the soldier's ankles, loaded, its stock fully extended. His back-up armament for when they came. He wasn't youngish looking and if Reed had to imagine him he'd have put him being right at home as a dirt-smeared fighter in some soggy foxhole on Cassandra. Aurelia, at least. They had a name for people like him: swamp donkeys.

Reed put his back against a wall in the narrow side street as he checked his magazines. Satisfied, he reached for his Helljumper knife's sheath and felt the rigidness of the hilt sticking out just to be sure it was still there. It may very well come down to a close-up brawl—a dirty, bloody and purely primordial event. He'd never fought with them with his hands and suspected it'd take a group to wrestle down even one but he couldn't know for sure. The folks who had maybe done something even close to that didn't tell him nothing because Reed had come across them in sinewy pieces just about always.

What the Elites did with their fancy squid sabres the hairy berserkers could do bare-fisted—ripped you apart. Among the men in Shield Recon during the fighting in Aurelia, they'd started keeping a grenade on them not for throwing: if you weren't long for this life and you knew it, and you knew they were coming, you laid where you were and you let them come... you pulled the pin and you tucked that grenade beneath your belly because if you didn't, the Brutes killed you slow. They cut pieces off you and split you down the middle with a couple of hard whacks, crotch first. That whole business with the grenade trickled down to the men in the regular companies and everybody talked about it on patrols. Few ever had to do it because by then Covie had caught on and started drilling the dead or dying from afar but this was a kindness—this was the whole point. This was what it was like to fight against the Brutes.

A Brute pack—camouflaged, no less—was about as bad as it could get. Reed knew Brutes, but admittedly wasn't sure how they'd attained the discipline required to slip into an Apex site like that. It could only mean they were of the highest-trained caliber respective of their race or rank or caste or whatever the Covenant classified them as.

The sergeant beside him was watching the whole time he made his preparations.

"You alright, soldier?" Reed said.

He nodded briskly. "That was my whole fireteam back there. Just...gone...in an instant. Gone."

Reed glanced at the mission clock in his HUD: 0833 hrs. He looked around the block just beyond his position. They were cloaked in shadow from surrounding structures. At least some small advantage.

"Well, we're not gonna let them do us in like that, are we?"

"Not if I can help it, sir."

"That's the spirit." He looked the soldier over more carefully, a sergeant outfitted to the neck in extra molle gear anchored to both his armor and rucksack. "Say, what's your speciality?"

"I repair optics when I'm not shooting at something."

"That's what I thought by looking at your maintenance patch. That a field kit on your ruck or are you just a hoarder?"

"No sir, it's what you think it is. Need to see inside?"

"Just rattle off what you got in there."

"Awful lot of stuff, sir. Those Brutes will be all over us by the time I'm done saying it all."

"Alright, just tell me if you got any glass polish."

"Of course I do."

"What, Cerium Oxide?"

"Yes, um, exactly." The soldier looked impressed with the Lieutenant.

"How much of it?" Reed asked.

"About a kilo. Why?"

"That's plenty. Give it to me."

He began to reach into his kit. "You want it all, sir?"

Reed snapped his fingers and the soldier hastened, handed over the entire quantity.

"Something tells me I won't be getting any of this back."

"Got any _empty_ bags as well?"

Without word, he retrieved what Reed had asked for, set them on the ground at Reed's feet and they both knelt down next to a caked and dried up rain gutter. Reed carefully poured about a handful of the material into one of the pinkish-clear bags and said, "What's your name, sarge?"

"Rickenbacker. Just call me Ricky."

"Ricky, this might wind up saving your life. All our lives." He gave it one last shake as motes of the stuff began to waft upward and into the air. He sneezed while reaching into his own ruck (this noise too caused men to look over warily, still anxious), pulling from it a satchel charge. He set it on the ground, disarmed it by removing the electrodes and ripped off a portion of the gooey explosive, placing it inside along with all the powder. "That oughtta be just enough."

He reattached the electrodes, spliced in an RF receiver inline and sealed off the bag.

"Little Hail Marys, these'll be."

The soldier nodded, gave his acting CO a sort of tired but wry smile. Reserved. That's the word. Like Reed had guessed, Rickenbacker was a see-it-to-believe-it sort of person.

Reed began making another and said, "Take some of this, repeat as many times as you can, and pass them out to the others. Furry little fuckers think they can slip in without consequence. Well, let's see what they do when they lose the stealth advantage. Remember, don't be afraid because they got one-track minds and they're naturally heavy-footed. You'll hear 'em before you see 'em. And when you hear 'em, toss one of these bags in their direction and push the button. Go, now."

The soldier whisked up about half the supplies and hurried off to other alleyways.

* * *

The hog jounced and jostled all over the road, deftly swerving obstacles, some from skirmishes long passed and some of 906th design. This driver knew them all and would be heralded for his skill if not for the situation at hand. The tires screeched to a halt right at the outer steps to the Abby and everyone milling about outside engrossed in their details stopped and stared to see a half-dozen troops fall out and scurry up the steps. Those same troops themselves stopped and stared straight upwards when shots could be heard ringing out from the rooftop, those machine guns coming to life, and the faint wail of the Banshee aircraft overhead—canards scraping at the air. Even if they couldn't see them that noise was unmistakable. Men out in the street dropped what they were doing and ran for cover. Those inside neighbouring buildings waved them in for shelter, anticipating a rain of plasma fire.

The driver said, "Shit!" and bounded up the stairs. His men and Pennington followed.

Those inside the lobby of the hospital might've had a few ideas of what was happening, but all the marble and metal inside dampened much of anything taking place outside.

"We're under attack!" Said the driver scurrying up another set of stairs.

Then a concussive shudder rolled through the structure, throwing people off balance, tripping them up on the steps. Pennington grabbed a bannister as bits shook from the high ceiling. The lights too reeled from the shock, blinking, the electrical hum of the older sconces dying out. Everyone held their breath as if they were waiting for the entire lobby to disappear in the next few seconds. They all knew one good hit would level the hospital to its foundations. But they remained. The impact had originated from high up inside the Abby and they were all still here.

Someone shouted, "Get to positions!"

At that, all combatants found new purpose and dispersed. Pennington broke off from the group of returning troops and looked around the frenzied lobby, grand and spacious as it was but nearly filled with people darting in all different directions going to where they were needed. As best he could see, no one in Lima Company was here.

He went to go find his people.

* * *

The ambush team was set up and dug in. As a final preparation, charcoal briquettes which were passed around courtesy of ex-Helljumper Reed, broken off into smaller pieces and smeared onto their skin and uniforms in an attempt to mask their pheromones. Then, five minutes of waiting elapsed. Total silence pervaded. There was the _rat-tat-tat_ of distant gunfire on occasion or the faint _pop-crack_ of something vastly distant that anyone would swear was a detonation. All Mombasa was in a wringer and everyone in it had their own battles to face. All just echoes from any other vantage.

Sergeant Rickenbacker whispered into his mic, "LT, you think they'll bring the Spartan out here?"

Despite him being a half-block away, Reed could sense the NCO's trepidation over the comm. Justifiable when taking into account what he'd witnessed happening to all his friends at the Apex site which could now be swarming with Covenant for all anyone knew. To bank on Lima Company sending in their finest asset, though, was a fool's hope in Reed's opinion. But he didn't dare say as much in reply. He settled on, "We'll just hold tight until reinforcements arrive. Try to keep this channel open in the meantime. Can't afford to give even one of these bastards any indication we're here."

It was a damn good question, though. It'd take a bit for Pennington to reach the hospital, an equal wait for Montclair and Watson to ready and deliver a response team, and even longer to get the bulk of the companies out this way in any organized shape or form. Because if Reed's thin line was overrun, there was little point in feeding the companies into the woodchipper piecemeal. For all they knew it was one big Brute trap.

A number of troops stayed on the street with Reed near a motel valet drive-through, heads low. Those in the nearby buildings watched for any sign of Covenant. Luckily for him, most of them upstairs were snipers once posted at the sub-Apex site. They were quite used to this sort of routine by now, and knowing this Reed felt as though the advantage actually rested in 906th hands for this piece of turf. What he hadn't foreseen was a wraith tank on approach. He could hear it.

The croaky whine of its powerplant echoed all around off every hard surface, making its exact whereabouts hard to pinpoint. The reverbs almost made it sound like two, or three. Maybe four. An armored column added to the mix would definitely clout their odds against the camouflaged Brutes. They'd be pinned down inside structures they couldn't fight their way out of—relegated to just waiting out a creeping death. Then all at once it materialized at the end of a nearby street. Turning the corner, it then proceeded down their lane, the one street they had total coverage on. Just one. Not a fleet of them or even a pair.

 _Sent in all alone, now that is a tempting opportunity,_ Reed thought to himself.

That was his Helljumper mentality resurfacing. He had engrained into his nervous system the will and know-how to venture off into unknown territory and dismantle enemy assets—comms, armor, caches, whatever. Anything to bleed the enemy from a hundred or thousand cuts. It all added up.

But this lone wraith tank venturing inward was the Covenant's sacrificial lamb.

He decided to break radio silence, if only to steady the troops.

"Probably just a ruse. Hold fire. Let it pass."

It was a tough call for Reed to make. Machines like this would liquify an entire squad and usually did. Even the grunt mounted on its ancillary turret would be like a quick snack for one of his snipers. But he knew that even if they destroyed such a valuable target, however easy it was this moment, it would reveal their positions to the Brutes he just knew were out there somewhere, watching. Further, he knew that they could be using this tank as a distraction for what they were doing right this second—combing this avenue, its alleyways, and even the structures among them. He looked to the periphery, the horseshoe arrangement of neighboring buildings that led right up to their immediate flanks—and not enough open space between them. They could easily slip inside their perimeter...again.

"Alright, troops, abandon your lookout posts and retract toward the motel. Posture for CQB. It's time."

No responses, of course, but he knew they all understood.

A few creaks here and boots shuffling here or there, but no other sounds emanated from the men. Anyone—friend or foe—could've mistaken the noises for shifting foundations or wind beating up the already crumbling exteriors. Luckily, their own structure had no wood inside, all stone. Glass shards previously scattered had already been policed up by them, swept aside by their hands and boots into corners and up against baseboards. They ducked low near the gaping windows, avoiding all contact with the outside. The tank could still be heard, though it was fading from earshot as it proceeded to turn another corner once it passed them up entirely. Ricky heard a growl nearby his position at the ground floor, or maybe a deep breath—but he knew a Brute was nearby so he froze. He hadn't expected contact so soon, but it was there, very close.

It was the most uncomfortable position to be in. Already, his thigh muscles began to burn as he stood there in half-squat, unnaturally frozen mid-stride with all weight on one leg. He glanced around with only his head as though it was swivel-mounted and found himself dead center between two windows. He couldn't see out either of them, but felt this Brute must be on the other side pacing the exterior. If he couldn't see it, it meant the same for that animal but they were so close together with just a brick wall of unknown thickness and the two wide open windows. He heard it start to take in the scents of the air, the draft through its nostrils slow but very powerful and deep like a man coughing. Just effortless whiffs that seemed to echo around a bit.

Maybe Ricky was found and the Brute was trying to zero his location. It was common knowledge to all UNSC personnel that Brutes had olfactory senses greater than that of any mammal indigenous to human-controlled worlds, which made it an even deadlier enemy than Elites in close quarters—because you couldn't hide. Or, maybe Ricky had gotten lucky and hadn't died by now because this Brute didn't know what charcoal was—it just knew it wasn't human flesh so it wasn't going ape-shit this moment. He gripped his assault rifle tightly and slowly shifted his weight before his stressed muscles lost the ability to control all this tension he was feeling. He then heard what he assumed was a frustrated bark right before it paced onward. Ricky could hear its footsteps just like the LT said he would, and it was walking away from him, sounding like it was headed for the backside of the establishment. With a small spike of adrenaline and maybe a lesser amount of wisdom, Ricky paced toward a door leading to that back alley, wondering if perhaps more were in its company. But he detected only one set of footfalls—it was alone.

He keyed his personal transceiver: "I've got one. It's headed out back. Following."

Reed immediately responded, "Roger, but keep your distance. Someone tail Ricky—in the case he gets into trouble. I don't want anyone aggressing alone."

Ricky stepped out into the open. It was there, somewhere up ahead. This alley was a bit too dim to risk stepping out this moment. He waited until he could hear the bassy footfalls no more—it turned the corner. Then, Ricky proceeded down its length as another NCO stepped out behind him. They exchanged nods and together they crept in pursuit. When they rounded the far junction, they were met with a face full of sunshine as they now faced due East. Brilliant sun rays streaked into the narrow walkway through a squall of clouds miles out.

Ricky then heard the footfalls again. It was pacing slow, combing the area deliberately—it was onto something. Maybe there was too much of one particular scent present and it warranted its investigation. That, or its nostrils could detect that hint of man-flesh masked right beneath the prevailing charcoal like a subtle tease to the pallette. The NCO reached into his pocket to retrieve the Cerium-Oxide IED. He whispered, "I've got the jump on one of them. Permission to toss frag."

There was a few seconds of silence.

Reed replied into the net, "Granted. Team, when you hear the detonation, post three snipers up as high as possible, the rest will cover the ground floor and Ricky's position outside. Go."

Ricky nodded at his comrade, glanced at his namestrip: GLENDALE. He handed him the transmitter paired to the bag he currently held. "Sergeant Glendale, detonate this when it falls to about head height, then open fire on it."

He nodded back.

Sergeant Rickenbacker wound up with his throwing arm, took a deep breath and chucked the bag to where he thought the animal might be. The two soldiers tracked its long arc and watched it reach its highest point about fifteen meters out, then it began to fall. At about two meters off the ground, a chest-rattling thunder-crack swelled everywhere and a flash of light glared too bright followed by a rusty-orange afterglow illuminating the resulting cloud. Rickenbacker's throw had run out of fuel a few meters shy of the monster, but there it was swiping at the air and barking angrily. It knew it was identified and was searching for targets. Ricky and Glendale could see its outlines shimmering in the early morning light, the Cerium-Oxide particulate clinging to it sharply. It tried to wet-shake itself clean but there was too much of it lingering in the air. Then, it found the two NCOs at the end of the alley.

It roared and hunched low with shoulders squared at them when it began charging. It all happened in just a couple seconds. It was usually a futile attempt to bullet-barrage an incoming berserker, but they did it anyway banking on the rest of the team covering down. It leapt and got halfway to them when its face exploded from the exiting sabot round fired from a window just one floor up, essentially point-blank.

No one had any time to assess the situation or give thanks as more growls resounded throughout the neighborhood.

"Everyone inside!" Reed shouted.

From what Reed could gather, each of the Brutes had split up to take their own building for inspection. Their calls were too muffled and echoed. They weren't on top of them but would be quite soon judging by the distances. He knew the troops would have at least a few seconds to make a play for their own defense. The problem with Brutes was that they were the kings of close quarter battles. You could spray them with any firepower you had short of a direct RPG hit and they would just keep coming at you, unflinching. Their ability to suppress pain and endure damage was second to none. The men needed standoff distance if they were going to make it through the end of this battle alive.

"Everyone get to the roof!"

All the troops ascended the central staircase of the motel, noise discipline now forgotten.

They reached the last flight when the walls of the ground floor basically imploded one section at a time. The Brutes had converged at the bottom like a wolf pack, bursted through brick wall like the place was made of strawbale. Reed slammed the rooftop door closed behind them and looked around to find the next strategy. He didn't like improvising on the go like this, but it was the only way.

The spaces between some of the adjacent rooftops weren't that far, he noticed. He ordered, "Snipers, jump yourselves to some of these other buildings for better positioning. Three people, toss me your bags."

They did so and Reed clustered the IEDs just outside the only door to the rooftop.

He jogged back to their position at the middle of the flat expanse.

"I need four people dedicated to scoping out the ramparts. We could have climbers."

Four men split off the main group and ran to those positions.

"If you've got working thermal on your HUDs, use it." Reed said. "You might be able to catch a glimpse of them if so."

Reed could hear them ascending with hard and fast strides even through the thick roofing. He prayed that maybe the staircase would yield and buckle beneath their combined weight. Failing that, he hoped he could get the jump on as many of them as he could once they reached the rooftop and opened that door. He held three detonators in his hands, ready to activate them all at once upon first sight.

"The rest of you," Reed said, "get your frags ready. This'll be messy."

The ascending footfalls were so loud and concussive that they could now be _felt_ through the roof tiles, then the door busted wide open and clanged on its hinges when it slammed the surrounding framework. Two of them wrestled through the threshold with elbows jutting out at one another, fixing their gazes on Reed standing out in the open. They charged forth and he depressed all three detonators.

Once the glaring light subsided and the cloud dissipated somewhat, he could see no Brutes, only bits and pieces of them falling down in streaks through rusty-orange dust. They were gone.

But then another materialized beyond the doorway, half in shadow. It proceeded through the cloud slowly, deliberately, searching for any other ensnarement that could possibly await it. After a few scrutinizing seconds, it then focused in on Reed, deactivated its cloaking and flashed all its teeth at him, the mouth salivating profusely. Rather than berserk straight for him, it simply took slow and careful strides out into the open beyond the lingering cloud of Cerium-Oxide. From a fixture mounted to its backside, it pulled up a giant hammer the size of him. Reed held his ground, readied another frag, and grinned wide as well. The Brute Chieftain smirked back, pacing wide and slow, a mock encirclement of its human target—the death dance. But Reed wasn't co-mingling with it—he simply held ground with the explosive bag fully wound up in one hand, then detonator in the other.

The Brute stopped after horseshoeing a few paces to Reed's left. The other troops stopped what they were doing, perhaps wondering why the Brute remained motionless and fixated on Lieutenant Reed. Some unlimbered their IEDs as well, anticipating something dreadful on the Brute's part, some feat of unmatched strength and agility that would send their OIC to the grave. Reed still held fast, unfazed.

Once more, the Brute smirked right at Reed as the rest of its pack emerged at the doorway—another five of them. Then, suddenly Sergeant Glendale who was posted at the rampart was snatched off his feet and pulled beyond the wall and down into the abyss-like alleyway below. His fading scream drowned out the Brute Chieftain's hoarse breathing. In that fleeting instant of confusion, most of the troops renewed coverage of their own sectors and the Chieftain's pack then charged at Reed on all fours.

The Lieutenant underhanded the frag-bag right at the Chieftain's face. Before he could push the button, it swung its giant hammer to the ground and from it a visible shockwave sent the IED wild and a few dozen meters skyward where it detonated.

"Shit!" Reed shouted.

The snipers bedded down behind cover at the adjacent rooftops fired at the Brute blitz. Four out of six fell instantly—from headshots or limbs claimed by those big AM-rifle rounds—but the Chieftain and one lesser made it through the volley with only grazing wounds and were closing in on Lieutenant Reed. All snipers were forced to either reload or reacquire aim at which point their commander out in the open was in mortal danger. The others posted at the central rooftop had their detonators readied but the Brutes quickly came to within striking distance and so tossing their frag-bags was no longer an option—and the lieutenant was out of options and all alone.

Before any of the soldiers could act, the Brute chieftain let out a rapid series of growls, an indecipherable order to its lesser. In an instant they both leapt from the rooftop and fell rapidly to the alleyway below. Their descent was maddeningly fast and their landing saw the street beneath them get gouged and cracked. Before anyone could line up a shot, both disappeared into the grid-like maze of the city.

The LT said, "We'll be seeing them again. Got a feeling about it."

"Friendlies up high," someone said.

Confused, Reed looked outward, then back to the slain Brutes, tried traced the trajectories—everything happened so quickly. The amount of blood that had already leaked out of their enemy's wounds was quite astonishing, even for their size. It wouldn't be long now. Sergeant Rickenbacker had every intention of exacting his own kind of payback. He sauntered toward one from behind—the only one still clinging to life. It had been hit in its chest and legs and was surely immobilized, though the upper limbs still functioned and could strike out if one was too close and not mindful of its deadliness. It swiped when the enraged human neared but Rickenbacker dodged and paced around it to where it could only growl in its current agony and an equal amount of hate. Rickenbacker stopped short of it, kicked away at its head with all his might for a moment, then once he was sure the alien couldn't fight back he unsheathed a thick combat knife. He bent down, whispered to it, "Those people you tore apart were my friends." With a sudden ferocity, he lunged forward with all his weight harnessed through the hilt and sunk the blade down into its neck at an angle. The Brute could do nothing but take the added pain and scream, which ironically only accelerated its demise unbeknownst to Rickenbacker in his all-consuming rage. Reed and all the others watched. "And that leader of yours, we will find him."

With the final breath, the brute said only, "He would welcome your attempt."

Limp, its body fell over, pupils fully dilated.

From a rooftop farther to the East, Reed saw men standing behind a cluster of giant heat exchangers. He had to squint and obscure the sun with a hand to see them clearly. They too watched, their sniper rifles slung over their backs and arms rather casually from what he could see of their outlines. One of them gestured a mock-salute at him and Reed responded with a nod.

" _Sergeant Whitcomb."_ One of them hailed over shortwave radio. " _Them Brutes had your number, LT."_

Reed glanced back at Rickenbacker still standing over one of them as slashing sounds kept echoing all around. "Thanks for the assist." He replied. "Where the hell did you guys come from? Did Watson send you? Captain Pennington?"

" _Neither. Montclair did, in a manner of speaking. We're Bravo Patrol, just got back in from the Northern Route. I see you left the Apex wide open for our return._ "

"In a manner of speaking." Reed flashed a grin. "You encounter any hostiles back at the Apex?"

 _"Negative."_

"That's funny. From what I heard, this Brute pack here ripped that thing wide open. You're telling me nothing else came in behind them?"

 _"Just us."_

Reed glanced over at Sergeant Rickenbacker—still hacking away at that Brute which was already long dead. "That's good news," he said, looking back to the returning patrol, "we should head back there and secure it. Might need to hold onto that place."

" _Swell idea, sir."_

* * *

Reed leaned over a window ledge, looked down and yelled, "Someone keep an eye on Ricky, will ya?"

The men had reconvened at the Apex site they lost earlier. It was a short jaunt by warthog, though not all of them could fit so the patrol paced behind and arrived five minutes afterward. Nothing much had changed except whatever was initially deteriorated when the Brutes infiltrated it. The walls they breached were blockaded again with any available materials nearby. One of the men found a bag of instacrete and had begun mixing it with the water from his canteen. Most of the others were posted on lookout, favoring not even the slightest of chances the Brute pack had acted alone.

At an old clock tower previously used as a sniper perch, Reed conversed with Sergeant Whitcomb, leader of Bravo Patrol.

"Your guy gonna be okay?"

"Can't be sure," Reed said, "isn't one of mine. Just met him this morning. But I can't tell you how glad we are to see you."

"You especially, I'm sure."

"True." Reed swiped off his helmet and rested it on an ammo crate. "I thought I was a goner."

"We heard quite the damn skirmish down the road once we cleared the Apex. We knew someone was in trouble. I'm a bit surprised, though. I didn't think that brute leader was going to live to fight another day. Thought he woulda gone to the bitter end."

"Guess he's one of the smart ones."

"Goes against their nature, but it seems you _both_ prospered because of it. We almost had the bastard, too. Was hoping he'd be just a typical cocky bastard and take a run at you."

"Not what I woulda hoped."

"Well, looks like our defenses are taking a full stress test."

"I know, right? Those Brutes neutralized this site in what I gather to be just minutes. A follow-up force could've easily taken over this place in their wake. Why didn't they?"

Whitcomb shrugged, lit up a cigarette. "Maybe they hadn't planned that far out. They call 'em Brutes for a reason. That's the only explanation I got."

Reed shook his head. "It doesn't fit the narrative of what else happened."

"What's that?"

"They sent in a tank as a lure. That's an expensive asset that they were willing to just throw away. They wanted us all dead. They didn't much care for this piece of turf, to secure it. They just wanted a way in and to start killing everything that moved. I know Brutes are supposed to be savages, but no one can tell me these fuckers were acting as a solo pack in the absence of orders. Some Covie prick back in the rear should've been coordinating their movements, an Elite officer or something like that. Some decision maker that had to know the Brutes would accomplish their mission and so they'd order another unit to seize this Apex swiftly afterwards."

Everyone knew Brutes weren't stupid but they also knew they were temperamental and out for blood, undisciplined at best. If they took you by surprise all by themselves, boy you had to be snoozing. Those facts were likely the only reason there were any surviving troops from the Apex site at all, but as Ricky once colorfully said, _they tore those guys to pieces._

Whitcomb pondered all that for a moment, staring at Reed.

"What?"

"Well, I was about to ask you if any of the other squads sent before us caught any luck out there. Because we spotted multiple Elites KIA not too far outside the Apex."

"I would've gotten wind of it. No, no reports on that." Reed smirked, "I'll check and see if maybe our new visitors sent their Spartan outside the wire at all."

"Say again? Spartan?"

"Yep, new sheriff in town. Well, maybe."

"When'd this happen?"

"Just last night. A lady, too. She's impressive. So, how many Elites are they short of out there?"

"There were three of them. All had spiker rounds in their chests."

This made Reed stop smoking. "Any photos of this?"

"Photos and videos."

"Good. I'm sure the leadership will want to see. Oh, by the way," Reed said, "The Brutes still out there and that tank...Tell your men to be extra careful. And fuck, that reminds me...I'm gonna have to call in a search party for Glendale's body."

"You lost one today?"

"Sure did." Reed shook his head. "You got another one of those?"

Whitcomb handed over a smoke to him.

"So, what's your story?" Reed asked.

"We were headed back to the Apex yesterday morning when we ran into...guess who?"

Reed shrugged as he lit up.

"Your old boys from Shield Recon."

Reed sat straight as he exhaled a puff of tobacco smoke. "Old Recon is still at it?"

"Yeah, they took over our role."

"Just relieving you guys. You guys only been out there, what, three days?"

"Came by order of Montclair."

"Wait, there were seven of you. Where's the other three? You lose 'em?"

Whitcomb then scratched at his head. "Well, that's the other part of my story. Didn't lose 'em, in a manner of speaking, but we _did_ lose 'em. Lost them to Shield Recon. Oh, Johnny Wyatt sends his regards, by the way."

"The hell are those boys doing out that way?"

"Didn't say. Didn't ask."

"Montclair ordered your squad to split up?"

"Nope." Whitcomb again paused. "The three of them broke ranks and joined Shield Recon by their own accord."

Reed's eyes bulged. "Montclair...when she finds out...she's gonna go ballistic."

"Yeah, I know. And I'm gonna bear all her frustration when I report that back. What could I do, though? I'm not gonna shoot them for disobeying an officer who flies a desk all day. Hell, they're right where they belong and I still don't know why we were pulled back. We could've all teamed up with Shield and been twice as effective out there. But I'm not the type to go up against officers' orders. Okay, maybe a captain and below. But field-grade officer is where I draw the line and I just shut up and color like a good boy."

"Strange days." Reed said, taking another drag.

"What's next?" Whitcomb asked.

"Wait for reinforcements to show up, then we can start manning this site again and return to the Abby. Maybe score some hot food and a wink of shuteye. It's been a long fuckin' day and it ain't even lunchtime yet."

"You hear that?" Whitcomb said, standing up swiftly.

"Yeah, those are hogs."

"Reinforcements?"

Reed then shot up from his seat. "Let's go find out."

Together, the two soldiers descended the clock tower's staircase and found a few of the men at the ground floor exchanging handshakes with men from one of the other companies.

They all stopped when they caught sight of Lieutenant Reed.

He said, "How many of you did they send?"

"Charlie, Second Platoon, sir. Got a buncha hitchhikers as well—some folks from Lima Company."

Reed asked pointedly, "And how many of them?"

"A couple fireteams." A few seconds of silence. "That was all they could spare."

Reed looked around at the many faces and saw that none of them were Marines—they were huddled over by the hogs past an open doorway.

"I'm sure they had their reasons for not sending more. Maybe Watson made sure they didn't send too much our way."

No one said anything.

"Alright," Reed said, "post up here and take good cover. The place is secure but no telling if there's any other bastard-fucks out there planning some more shit. We're heading back to the Abby and we'll be sending a return convoy your way with supplies and ammo."

Reed looked around again, noting how quiet it was.

"You all did a hell of a job today." He said, more so to his battle-weary comrades. "Beers are on me if there are any."

"Maybe wouldn't celebrate too early just yet, LT." The newly arrived Charlie Company soldier said. He eyed his compatriots. "Guess you haven't heard. About the hospital."

"Well someone goddamn inform me."

II

"Are you all right, Doctor?" Lieutenant Colonel Watson took his eyes off the scene as Dr. Faroush approached, her hands tucked into the pockets of a shabby-looking lab coat. Before them was the crash site. It was firmly day now, these hours later, and dusty sunlight poured down through the ragged hole above.

The Banshee had pirouetted through the side of the building at full throttle and while nobody had been directly in its doomed path, the rooms one floor below caved in from the impact. These had people in them. Drywall, rickety beams and broken slabs of concrete fell and crushed hospital beds and operating tables.

Faroush herself took in the extent of the damage a long while before telling Watson, "I was going to ask you the same, Colonel."

He turned back towards the destruction. He looked and felt pristine standing here. He felt out of place. The survivors had already been dug out. A number of sweaty troops shoveled debris while others went about hammering together new support struts. "It was sudden," he said.

"This was the overflow wing, luckily."

"I think when this war's done we're going to need to start re-evaluating the meaning of that word."

Faroush clarified: "There've been no deaths. Just six are critical, although I'm optimistic... I've seen car accidents that have done more damage. Barring one rather unexpected drop-in, it's a pretty average day." She said this with a tired smile.

Watson looked at her more carefully: her flattened hair that clung to her forehead, minuscule flecks of barely dried blood across her cheek underneath her eye. Telling signs. "You've been in surgery. Was it that bad?"

She held up her wrists, pantomiming sterile field procedure. "I have ever-willing hands to lend, is all."

"If you need me to recall personnel from the medical company..."

Faroush waved away the thought. "Your people are where they're needed. I can manage this."

Watson rubbed a thumb across his cheek. "You've got something there."

Using the back of her white sleeve and peering at it afterwards, Faroush told him, "It looks worse than it was."

"It _looks_ like arterial spray." At Faroush's indifferent grimace, Watson said: "Sticking with just pretty average, huh?"

"This is a rough neighbourhood, Colonel. Right now I'm just looking for coffee, like I do every day. You know me well enough by now. If I think I've got some minutes to kill, it probably means the world isn't ending just yet."

"Not for another few minutes at least, no. I am glad you're okay, though. Don't let me hold you up."

"Accompany me, will you?"

Watson didn't want to tear himself from the busted up hospital wing, and he looked for any excuse to remain but the D-Company engineers who huddled around blueprints underneath a single worklamp seemed to have things well enough handled—they'd scarcely acknowledged him the entire time he was there. He didn't know why he wanted to stay. Guilt, perhaps. He'd been up since the rifle companies Shield and Sword, and even sections of Charlie were scrambled in the early hours of the morning but was safely tucked in the climate-controlled basement of the hospital, sipping hot mugs for hours while Montclair read aloud reports flowing in from the frontline, the situation cautious and vaguely defined like the opening hours of a border-wide invasion you barely knew the full extent of—and never would until they boxed you in and were already closing the pocket.

And the Banshee attack, when it happened, he'd barely felt it. It was over too quickly. It left a number he didn't know wounded—six critical, though—and he found this out long after the fact. So he stood here at the foot of the wreckage while his people shoveled and swept; while most of his battalion shot and were being shot at less than 20 kilometres away; while (he knew now) Dr. Faroush herself and her staff reset shattered bones and stitched up crushed bodies, all still shaken and jittery because they were here, they themselves had felt the ground quake and give way. The war had reached these hallways, more so than it had ever before. Everything they'd worked so hard to secure and flourish all this time was still under threat. And so, for Watson, backing away from this specifically was giving up. Wasn't it?

However, Faroush said: "Unless you're about to pick up a dustpan and brush, Colonel, I'd like you to walk with me."

She was right. He wasn't helping anyone like this. He relented, and the two headed back down the hall towards the lobby.

"And the day resumes," Faroush said, noting the generally unchanged atmosphere throughout the rest of the hospital. Personnel continued on with their tasks, barely pausing to acknowledge their commanding officer. "I've seen trepidation up close. Your people handle it well."

"Just be worried the day they don't."

"You're convinced that's soon, aren't you?"

"The Covies have been shooting 'cross our bow all morning." Watson motioned back towards the stricken wing of the hospital. "If _that_ was the opening salvo, it's only a matter of hours—if that—before they get wise and try to sink our battleship."

"How is it out there?"

"Under control for now. But we thought the same about here too—that we were untouchable. Won't think that again. Not anytime soon."

"Simply a lucky strike on their part."

"And there's that word again. Was it you—or someone who looks remarkably similar—who was in the middle of convincing me of how damn fortunate we were, six critical?"

"The word I used preceding that was 'just,'" Faroush said. "And my point stands: it's handled—I'm handling it. The injured ones are in my care, safe as can be. You give your assessments with confidence, and so do I."

"Maybe up in Covie-heaven they're all cackling about it and calling it a win. Maybe this was the bastard's ticket in: a one-way, economy-fare into the good place. Blew himself right through the purply-gates."

"Then it was a fruitless endeavour, if that's the case. The hospital is still safe."

"Far too early to say, really. Once we patch up that hole in the sky they managed to slip through I'll start leaning towards a maybe on that. Only then, and only maybe."

But Watson failed to mention the Apex site that fell simultaneously, for good reason.

"Well, I'm positive you'll make that happen," said Faroush.

Her reassurance didn't put Watson at ease. If anything, it left him feeling unsettled—suspicious. This woman had spent the better part of the last three weeks with always more questions for him, more doubts. They crossed the lobby and began to climb the stairs and he didn't let it go.

"I don't know what I've done to inspire such confidence," he said.

"I give it for you to borrow. Sounds like you're in dire need of it."

"Seems like it's about the only thing that's keeping us alive, doesn't it? You'll forgive me if I don't sound more appreciative but you might well be throwing pearls at swine here."

"You've been rather glum all morning and I want to know why. I like you best when you play it straight with me, Colonel. I can be brave enough for the both of us."

"All right. I'm worried about what this attack hints at—what's coming next. They're close, Doctor. They ascertain where we are more and more, and they can only close in further from here. For all your confidence, welcome as it may be, it doesn't change facts," he said. "For all your confidence you need to be ready to expect Covenant troops coming in through those big doors, taking to this very staircase, walking these halls. You need to expect bodies and bloodstains. Not that you haven't seen those things before—you being drenched in bodily spew—but you need to expect that this place could fall. Leaving nothing but bullet holes and stillness. Empty, dead hallways that'll just look so much like the rest of this city, like we were never here at all. The thought gives me a chill, maybe it does you too. Well I'll do everything I can to keep it a nightmare hypothetical, but we do need to think about contingencies... if I can't."

"If you've thought this through, tell me our options. Please. I'd like to know where we stand, and don't dress it up for my sake."

"Then where you stand is about to become the middle of an industrial meat grinder. The longer you stay, the harder it'll be to get away. If the Covenant surround us, there'll be nothing to do but fight to the death. Expend all rounds—nobody gets out alive. Everyone knows this. Best case is the Covenant might provide an avenue of escape, force us to lose our nerve and run right where they want us to because we'll be that desperate, we'll try anything. Well nine-oh-sixth won't do that. Our job's to get you and your people out of here. We won't let the Covenant dictate the terms. Because by then it'll be too late."

"So it's hopeless. For your mission," Faroush said. "For this hospital."

"It's as hopeful as it gets, you run a road with a big sign that warned you 'no through road' a country mile back because you were curious to see how far it'd take you. It's not much for uplifting news, but we can't say we didn't see it coming. Never was under any kind of illusion."

"Then why come at all?"

"Hope factored in?"

"Delusion's a kind of illusion."

Watson gave a subtle shake of his head. "Thankfully we haven't reached the very real end yet, though best we can do is slow us down long enough for you to hop on off."

"How long do we have before you evacuate?"

"We are staying right here. But you and the refugees are another matter. I'd start packing your valuables first chance you get. Truth be told, myself and my second-in-command have been combing through a dozen reports coming off the streets up to the minute. Because the second the situation worsens beyond repair, you'll be aboard an armed convoy, bound for a predetermined Alpha-site where you'll wait for air-evac that will come for you—you have my guarantee. We're waiting on a final okay from upstairs."

Faroush nodded, mulling it over. "And you, if I understand correctly, you will go down with the ship."

"She is as grand as any to do it," Watson said with a wry smile, glancing around the lobby. "Before that happens I'll make sure all refugees are protected. Not one gets left behind."

"Meaning you'll cripple your fighting force to make sure we escape unscathed... and then you die quicker."

"It's a little more nuanced than that."

"It's all very noble, I'll grant you," she said. "There's only one problem I see with it. One unstable element you overlooked that stops your machination in its tracks."

"Which is?"

"Me, when I say no."

Watson paused mid-step. "I don't think you can do that."

"You'll put me on your convoy? Just like that?" She made a cavalier gesture like picking up something insignificant out of mid-air and dropping it elsewhere, a divine hand.

"Won't say that I will, Doctor... but then again I won't say that I won't, either, we get to that moment in time. Maybe then you'll even thank me. Maybe there'll still be an Abigail Aki Memorial at all. It's only your life we're talking about here."

Faroush and Watson reached a coffee dispenser. She began to fill a paper cup.

"I'll thank you now for being so forthcoming with me, Colonel. Truly. So in the spirit of sharing, I'd like to tell you what I was thinking."

"Guess I don't need to say it but you've certainly got my attention."

"You don't know where I come from—and why would you?—but take me at my word when I say I'm used to fighting for what's mine. I am used to fighting those who try to take what's mine from me. This won't be the first time I've stood my ground and said let them come."

Watson shook his head. "I know what you're getting at."

"Not getting at—I'm saying it: if you stay, we stay too."

"There's no 'we,' Doctor. We're here to get people out of the fire, not toss them back in."

"What if your convoy never makes the journey? Or your Alpha-site is overrun?" Faroush said.

"It's a gamble, but I like those odds a heck of a lot more than the alternative. They're not getting any better and they're definitely not going to swing the other way unless we fix the match."

"What if what you said about the Covenant is accurate: that they're just waiting for you to do this? It's desperation, even I know that. It stinks of it. I don't wish to second-guess you, Colonel, but you're right, it _is_ our lives. When I promised all refugees sanctuary, I took on the full responsibility of acting in their best interest. These people aren't yours, they're mine. So I couldn't possibly agree to something I had so little faith in and ask them to blindly trust me."

"And if I said staying here—fighting—was less than a sure thing? Certain death, even?"

"You won't, and I won't let you. Because if you do, it's over for us here. As leaders and protectors—of your people and mine. The last thing we should do is cause a panic, especially not prematurely," Faroush said. "We must be together on this, but I warn you'll find I'm quite resolute. Immovable."

"Until I pick you up and put you on that convoy."

"This has been a topic of discussion for weeks now. Ever since you arrived," Faroush said. "I have men and women here who will gladly fight the Covenant if they are indeed coming for this hospital. All they need are weapons."

"That's all, is it?"

"They can shoot. I'll attest to that. It's a fact you have more rifles than men and even I know wars are won with numbers. I have those, and I offer to you something of equal importance: willing minds and willing spirits. A resource high in value and in all-too-short supply. Especially now."

"Let me tell you something about spirit, Doctor. I start rounding up boys—"

"And girls."

"I start throwing these people into the fight, maybe bringing them back with red, red wounds 'til you got a line going out the E.R. so long you'd need to form a queue like we're in a goddamn delicatessen, what kind of spirit do you think you'll see around here then? What kind of panic?"

"They'll be volunteers. No one here who doesn't want to be. Nobody is getting rounded up; the big bad Army isn't coming to take their young'uns away."

"I think you'd have a hard time convincing even me of that."

"I'd appreciate an answer, Colonel. Is this you saying no?"

"This is me saying honestly, I don't know. It's not something I can make up my mind about right here and now."

"But you'll think on it."

"I will." Watson nodded, but doubt was still evident all over his face. He looked at his shoes. "I know there are people who have had no choice but to fight the Covenant because beyond that there's only laying down and dying, but... it's a different story when the moment comes to actually do it."

"We're made of stern stuff here. We've had to be. There are many refugees who can't stand the feeling of helplessness you bestow on them. They feel you coddle them."

"Only if not throwing 'em to the wolves is 'coddling' now."

"All I'm saying is the hospital was attacked but nobody is close to calling it quits. We know the risks, and we won't abandon our post," Faroush said. "Perhaps it's time we abandon the notion that _we_ are your mission, and start working under the directive of survival at all costs? At least until we get out of this situation."

Watson said, "That's a window rapidly closing. You really put that much faith in this place you'll take your chances?"

"I have faith in numbers. Which should mitigate the risk."

"You'd think so, but we're facing down the Covenant and all the unbridled fury that comes crashing down with that name. With their troop strength, their firepower, those are numbers too. Stacked against ours, there's no getting by being cute about it: more is more. Strong as we are together, me and you…"

"Now, _I_ recall a man—he looked _remarkably_ like you—who two weeks ago told me one hundred and one reasons why my hospital was the focal point for the UNSC relief effort in Mombasa. You should have heard that kind of bravado. There was high talk of beating the odds and all kinds of devious strategizing," Faroush said. "I was compelled, certainly."

"Compel I did." Watson shook his head. "But two weeks ago they never made a stab at the vital organs. The heart, the brains, the jugular… whatever you call this place. The mighty spinal column. It goes..."

"All the more reason to turn and face them. Don't let them drive their spears into our backs."

"You turned that one against me."

"Tell me I'm wrong."

"I won't. Not that I can't, mind you—I won't. If I gotta consider all options, this one's as option-y as the next and I owe you the courtesy. But respectfully, Doctor, I'm still going to take my time with this decision." The lieutenant colonel glanced up and looked her in the eye. "Because the hospital was attacked and nobody died."

"And what?"

"You're all feeling the high of being near the action, closer than ever if I'm correct, and nobody died," Watson said. "I suppose it's terribly faux pas to say what I'm about to, given everything we've seen and the years we've lived, but few people will admit to the sense of exhilaration they get when they're out there. It's shameful, but there's nothing quite like the excitement of a good brawl, shooting and getting shot at. It gets the heart pumping—gets you hard as hell. You see bodies get flung, and everybody's cheering because goddamn is it a sight to see. It's a great deal of fun and that's the truth of it. But that all fades and when you're left with a guy who's gut-shot or limb-torn, you figure out pretty quickly none of you are invincible."

"I'd like to remind you just who exactly it is left dealing with the lows, and picking up the pieces—and sewing them back on. And you're wrong about one thing, Colonel. Today wasn't the closest I've been to combat, the fighting part of war. I've lived almost as long as you have. When I said I fought my own battles, I wasn't talking about budget hearings at city hall or with fucking Angela from the party-planning committee. This war here isn't my first."

Watson narrowed his eyes. With histories as wide-reaching as UEG's and the far colonies', it was naive to assume anyone was from just anyplace. Nothing compared to the end-times kind of events that were making up the story and struggle of humanity today, but it still was bloody and genocidal. The bad blood was not erased by the Covenant, not to those who had fought wars—plural—in their lifetimes.

"So then why," he said to her, "are you so damn eager to jump back into another one?"

"Because this time, the might of the UNSC is on _our_ side." With that, Faroush left him at the door that led into the busy hospital wing. Watson stood aside to let a group of hospital workers slip through. Before she let go of the door, the doctor said to him: "We're ready for a fight, Colonel. Be it with the Covenant or whatever else."

* * *

"I heard you'd come around. And why."

Captain Stern faced Major Montclair, tearing his attention away from the men he had loading ordnance into a fleet of warthogs parked outside the hospital. "You caught me."

"Red handed. I know you've been twisting arms when I ain't around, makin' drug deals. It's in your nature, Captain," Montclair said. "I'd expect nothing less."

"Maybe it's not so much my problem as you got yourself a supply officer with no backbone."

"He's new on the job. But you knew that. Do I sense any untoward conspiracy happening behind my back?"

"If there was I wouldn't have to get my ass down here, and beg and plead with the man. I think he's still a little sore at me—he doesn't make it too easy."

"But you get what you want."

"I do, ma'am."

"You know I don't make a habit of playing favourites, but... keep beggin'." Montclair winked. "You won't hear me complain if Shield gets a little leg up, especially now. Consider that putting a half-point on the spread by me."

"I surely will." Stern gave a sidelong smile. "And it's much appreciated. But if the implication of that means what I think it does, then I take it things aren't so peachy down in The Bunker."

"You heard about the attack, right?"

"I heard it sounds worse than it was."

"Sure, one dead Covie and none of ours. I'll take it. But thinking ahead..."

"You folks make any headway on that front? Why he did it? Other than wanting us dead, of course."

"There were two of them. Got through a gap in our coverage. They were in the air an uninterrupted minute from what I been told."

"Plenty of time. Too much."

Montclair nodded. "The two Covies began to hightail it outta there. One turned around, the other didn't. You keep shooting at the one blasting off and getting smaller by the second, or the one who's suddenly got you in his sights, finger on the trigger? In a perfect world we get both. This ain't, so our people focused down, on instinct—not saying it was the wrong thing to do, a dead Covie's a dead Covie—but one got away. His wingmate, the one who stayed, thruster got shredded and he took a nose-dive into the first thing he could."

"They got none of ours, huh?"

"Overflow wing. Some wounded but that's all."

"Second Banshee'll come back to bite us."

"No doubt. We got to assume they got everything: troop strength, positioning, any gaps in the line... you'll have your marching orders soon. Watson's reconfiguring the umbrella best he can—more AA positions to prevent another strike on the hospital—but it's not going to be easy."

"Shield's slugged it out a few rounds today. Aside from their attack on the Apex this morning… nobody else killed yet. And they can't get past us so I like where we're holding out. We're going to sacrifice that ground for something worse? Next-best, sure, but no less, in-other-words worse?"

"Once they start calling airstrikes down on your company, I doubt you'll feel the same. Or if Sword and Charlie break, knock on wood they don't but there's a reason you're Shield and they ain't, you'll be left stranded. No, Watson's going to tighten our grip. Can't afford to ignore the implications of an attack like the one today—one giant red flag. Waiting and seeing might be tantamount to us being a deer in the headlights and we got no one to blame but ourselves 'cause we saw 'em coming a mile away. We just don't know how fast."

"Have to think they've known where we've been based since the start, they seen how we come and go. We're not exactly subtle here. What's stopping 'em from dropping bombs on the Abby? Pulverizing us from afar? And if that's the case, why stop there? Why goddamn not fancy themselves unleashing everything they got on the whole inner city?"

"That's a hell of a good question but one I got no answer to."

"But it's come up in conversation, right? Between you and Watson? Maybe you two know something I don't."

"All we know is that the Covies are on the move, I've got that unanimous from all down the line—they're cagey," Montclair said. "Coming in for a fight then ducking back out, encircling. Fast, light hands. Could be they're fortifying the line they got that's right outside of ours, so we can't push back even if we break through a full-on assault. We're tough all right and we can take getting chipped at, and sometimes being on the inside's the right place to be against an opponent who runs like that, but sometimes it ain't. Until we're back online with IRIS, there's only so far out we can see and who knows what's further beyond."

"We're firmly within artillery range, that much is certain. They got reach on us and if I know anything, Covies can be nimble and they can be juggernauts one moment to the next."

"We've killed some of theirs but not more than we do usually. If these reports I'm getting are accurate, they're not committing everything they've got, not like they would or should to gain ground. They've tried harder for more entrenched positions."

"Not one step back," Stern noted. "Agreed, they're giving us the run-around. The thought's crossed my mind. Come up against brute fighters, and I know how they go to war. Could make a compelling argument somebody's got 'em muzzled, on a tight leash."

"I don't think the attack today was random—something's coming. The Covies have tactical commanders the same as us and it's naive to think they're coming for us just because. Expendable bodies, attrition... it's just one more tool they have at their disposal that we don't."

"Damned literally."

"No real cost for 'em, can't hardly call it wasteful though it is, cost of a whole entire life being what it is. As for us, nobody died in the hospital today but everybody's talking, casting eyes to the sky. It doesn't seem like it but it's a quiet kind of chaos in the basement. Watson's more worked up about it than anybody might think by looking at him. A couple more of those and we'll fold, even if we keep the body count at a nice big oh."

"So that's it? That's all it'll take to get Watson to call it?"

"It is, if we can't get a leaky roof fixed. We'll have to hit the road once they have us zeroed. With the kind of firepower we know they always have in reserve we can't afford to go to ground, play Whack-a-mole with things that go boom. We won't last long. Only thing keeping us here, whether it's good or bad, is the Covies could have obliterated us by now, only they haven't. They want to close with us. For what reason we can only speculate. And if that's the case, we best watch our back."

"Fine, ma'am. Once I'm finished here I'm back to the line. I'll ready my guys to move."

"Thanks for understanding. Another thing, before you go...Even if we tighten up our sphere, we're still not going to be fighting within seeing distance of each other... we're going to have blind spots. So we're setting up audio recorders out there, an early warning system of sorts. If alarms go off..."

"We haul ass, I got it."

"Though where we're putting them, you won't have a lot of time to react. You'll need to drop what you're doing and shift to where ever we need you, even if that means coming straight home. The same goes for Sword and Charlie."

"Those machines better not break, then."

"Second thing they know how to do best, unfortunately. I trust you to trust your gut, and your eyes."

"If there's time."

"If and only," cautioned Montclair.

* * *

The fighting at the periphery of the defensive sphere had more or less trickled to kilometre-long shootouts with not a lot of movement, so back at the Abby Lieutenant Reed was sifting through papers at his "desk." This was a fold-out table somewhere deep inside one of the hospital's loading bays—Reed's office. A civilian nurse, Elizabeth Almasi, slunk into the warehouse area and headed straight towards him. She sidestepped Reed's men who lifted boxes off of pallets and nearly bounded overtop of Doll Fraser who sat on the cold floor packing rifle mags, counting out bullets into a plastic speedloader balanced on her lap that clicked and clacked like some abacus.

She'd been doing this since the battalion was scrambled to action this morning, the hospital set to condition two. When the call went out most men reached for their rifles, she for shrinkwrapped boxes of rifle rounds and empty magazines. Welcome to Nine-oh-six support company, soldier. Busywork. Mindnumbing but better than fucking hard labour. They sent most of chain-gang up to the front to pour concrete and lay down bags and wire, to just toil away like they were supposed to. She was glad it was a relatively painless way to get out of it, choosing to help out Reed now that she had been liberated from the disciplinary unit, but now the excitement had worn off. She didn't much love being in the thick of dangerous combat, but she hated the soldiering even more, somebody god damn telling you what to do and watching over you while doing it. She'd traded the uncertainty of waiting to be rounded up and sent into the bloody fray at IRIS with the uncertainty of waiting around to be massacred by the Covenant, if they came. Stuck here, there was nowhere to run.

As the nurse approached, Reed looked up and smiled. "How's life on the surface, Liz? Sincerely, the mole people."

Liz didn't smile back. "I need to talk to you. Not here."

Reed got to his feet and ushered her into an empty break room. He shut the door behind him as Liz turned to face him.

He said, "What's happening?"

"One's dead. From today."

"Sorry, Liz, that's terrible."

"No—he was one of you."

Reed fell silent, like he needed to make sense of the news a moment. "From today, the collapse?"

"It left six in critical condition. One was a soldier."

He stared at her. "Shit."

Liz nodded. They both knew a death like this would have adverse consequences.

"What was his name? His unit?"

"Henry Shannon. C Company private, I think. Brain hemorrhage."

A war like this, and that was how he was taken. He took a hit to the head. Christ.

"Who knows?" he asked.

"The attending physician, the nurses on duty... Doctor Faroush. Now you."

"Okay," Reed told her, "well I'll have Captain Alley notified right away."

"Actually, that's what I... Can you do something for me?" Liz said. "Keep this quiet? At least for now."

"What for?"

"I don't want this news blowing up. Please. This is a bit of a critical time, for everyone here at the hospital. I think you know why."

Reed looked like he was wrestling with the idea because she wasn't wrong. Everyone out there was bracing themselves, wondering what was coming next, when everyone in here was already shaken by a direct attack. The first defeat: many wounded, one—now—dead. No matter the amount hurt, in the end bones healed. Conceding to death weighed heavy, was an irreplaceable cost, impossible for any amount of time and bandages and drugs to fix. He was not a man who got hit out there and died in here, no. Covie killed him as good as smothering the breath out of him right here in this place of refuge, an invasive breach that would shatter the feeling of protection this place was built on once others heard the news. The story would spread, and as much as duty to truth was the governing rule in Reed's mind, timing was everything. The death of this soldier could be a lurking torpedo—it could mean the end of the mission in Mombasa.

Given the state of things, with everyone on high alert, Reed wondered if maybe it wasn't such a terrible thing to call it quits. The battalion had one more big battle in them, they were ready to fight and they were resilient enough to hold on, he didn't doubt that for a second, but that didn't mean they'd win. Even with a Spartan. There was tomorrow to plan for and that mattered just as much as surviving today.

"It could have been worse, right? It could have been a civilian," Reed said to Liz. "That's gotta count for something."

"A death is a death," she said. "It changes things, regardless if they're wearing a uniform or not."

Reed asked her, "Do you want this place to stay open? Keep doing what we're doing?"

"I do, Reed." There wasn't a hint of hesitation behind that.

"And if that was out of our hands?"

"I'd stay to whatever end. Premature or not."

Reed nodded. "I think the lieutenant colonel at least should know. About our Charlie Company private."

"Doctor Faroush will tell him herself."

"That's fair."

"Do you think this might push him over the edge? Doctor Faroush would like to remain as long as it's safe—maybe despite that. I don't mean to be insensitive."

"Not at all. It's on my mind too. Watson can handle one soldier killed in action, the same as any of us. And like I said, it could have been worse. We've lost lots of our guys, but not civvies. Not inside our camp, never. We lose a man, woman, or child on our watch—who we swore to protect—and I think that'll do it. Because that'll have been a colossal fuckup in planning and there is no excuse. But we still haven't yet. We came close today and I think it's still up in the air. At this point, it's up to your Doctor Faroush if we close up shop, if the loss of our Charlie Company private rattled her."

"I don't think it has."

"All right, then." His hand touched the doorknob.

Liz asked him, "And you, Reed? Do you want to stay?"

He faced her. "Yeah I do. Maybe against better judgment." He quickly added, "I ain't general consensus, keep in mind."

"That's a shame," Liz said.

"Could be that it is. Could be I'm likely to get me and you, along with everyone else, killed. I get put in any position of real power and you ask me again it'd probably take me more than a beat to give you an answer. Can't even guarantee it'd be the same one. If I'm honest."

"No, I understand. Minion to minion," Liz said and smiled. "So you'll let Faroush break the news herself?"

"I will."

"It'll be soon."

"Hey... Why'd you tell me, Liz? Of all people. You didn't need to but you did."

"You're an officer, maybe the only one I know around here. And probably the only one I trust."

Trust, she said, admitted like it were the L-word. Trust was bestowed the same way between people here, times like these, as precious even, and the word thrown around almost as haphazardly. You couldn't be sure it didn't mean nothing. So Reed just nodded.

"As for why..." Liz swallowed. "A death's a death. There's no such thing as next of kin around here, so if anyone knew him well... I want him to have that. He died alone."

Fraser looked up as Reed and Liz left the room. The lieutenant watched her exit the warehouse, and Fraser too was watching from her spot on the ground. Reed took a seat at his table, but looked over at Fraser.

"Doll, you have pals in Charlie, right? You know a Shannon? First name Henry?"

Fraser stiffened, hands gripping the sides of the speedloader. The clinking brass ceased. She slowly nodded. "I know him."

"I got some bad news. He was in the attack this morning."

"I knew that."

"Liz just told me he passed. I'm sorry, Doll. If there were others he was close to as well, would you mind letting them know? But only them's like family. I don't want this getting back to Watson yet."

Fraser gently set aside the plastic tray and pushed herself upright. She said, "I need a moment."

Reed resumed his work. "Take all the time you need."

It was a nice, human gesture from Liz, he thought. Times like these it was important people never forgot where they came from, and to hell with the war, people needed to look out for each other. He'd think of a way to repay her the favour when things settled down.

* * *

Watson, for once now alone in his office, reached into a drawer and pulled from it a copper goblet with the 906th coat of arms embossed into it and a small vial of liquor. He set them both on the desktop, thinking and enjoying the silence. The hours of his day were usually frequented by visitors, usually Montclair, who he didn't mind seeing. In fact, she was usually the calming ballast against all the tumult that filled his life in this place.

A knock at the door came and Watson rubbed at his temples. He'd have to welcome more visitors, make concessions, appease the masses.

"Enter."

In walked Captain Pennington of Lima Company, his Marine Corps fatigues set apart from so many others. Though unsolicited and rare, Pennington's visit here was a departure from all the doom and gloom Watson was overly familiar with. He was about to offer a smile and kind words to the young man, but he could see that the gestures would only be at the wayside of what was about to take place.

Watson looked Pennington over and could sense unease, something that didn't seem to sit quite right with the young officer—the body language but mostly the darting eyes. Even now, he showed a reluctance to hold firm eye contact any longer than Watson would. Uncertainty of the mission given him, most likely his burden, Watson pondered. He'd seen plenty of people coming and going lately, their fresh eyes all alone and wondering if they'd ever meet with familiar faces again. At least he and the 906th were here on their own accord, fulfilling their own requirements with like-minded people who'd shared many experiences together. As commander of Lima Company, Pennington would have a lot answering to do both up and down his chain. Watson felt a pang of pity for the captain, offered a drink with an empty glass raised at him. "Some painkiller?"

Once Pennington regained his sight on Watson, he promptly declined the gesture with a shake of the head. "Shouldn't."

"Something on your mind?"

"I saw the crash but wasn't allowed to see the impact itself. I know it's not really my business, but is everyone okay?"

"Yes, so I'm told."

Watson was terse with his reply, but Pennington thought nothing of it.

"Had a hell of a wake up call this morning." Watson added. "That's just one way of putting it."

Pennington breathed deep. "I know what it's like to be surrounded on all sides with little you can do about it. It's the worst."

Watson smiled. "No other way we can take it. This is our ship. We go down, we go down swingin'."

Pennington nodded, then there was that moment of silence they both knew was coming.

It was Watson, predictably, who broke it.

"So, what's the Marine Corps been up to these past hours?"

"Well, Amy's been patching into unit comms like planned. I'm due for a brief from her. Hopefully your patrols bear good news beyond your farthest outposts."

"Mmm," Watson nodded, cupping his hands together. "Great. I've got to say that having a Spartan take part in all this is a morale boost in itself. Ah, hell, that goes without saying, I'm sure you know."

Pennington nodded.

"I hardly ever see her, but she manages to sift through most of our intel. Major Montclair has nothing but praise for her, says she's a machine. So, any plans for your troops as well?"

"Once I get that brief, I plan to visit that piece of the mission. Where to commit them. I'll be sure to back-brief you as well."

Watson nodded firmly. "Great." He shuffled some desk items.

Pennington shifted, cleared his throat. "Unfortunately, we didn't make it out to Reed's position in time to assist with that Apex site that got taken down."

"Well, you did what you could, and all is well. Everything worked out and I'm told they hold that ground again. So, what do you think so far, long term? I'm asking as just a colleague here. I don't presume you're here to be placed under my command, I never was informed of anything like it, so I'll just assume this is just a favor coming from our respective head-sheds back at IRIS. That said, is there something we're supposed to provide in return for your service here? Regardless of its extent."

Pennington gave a glance over his shoulder, checking the door. "Sir, since this is the best time...maybe the only time to get you one-on-one, I'm going to be direct with you right now…"

Watson sat straighter. He could see that all the unease in the young officer simply disappeared, their eyes now locked.

"Sir, Colonel Mattis is going to pull you out of Mombasa."

Silence.

Watson slowly nodded, like he knew it was coming but the timing wasn't favorable. There was still more to be done, always more. Now, it was he who lost eye contact, deep in thought.

"This hasn't been in the works long from what I gather, but I'm the messenger. You understand why I'm telling you this now?"

"Yes. For the sake of the others."

"They would've delivered it by drone dispatch, but others would've seen that message."

"And all hell would've broken loose."

Pennington said, "Exactly.".

Wordless, Watson poured his drink, occasionally glancing at Pennington. He began to sip slowly.

"I know this is hard to stomach, sir, but it's going to happen and you ought to be prepared."

"They tell you when?"

"Up in the air. I think this all dovetails into what's about to take place out at Voi, though. That's where it's all shifting. Major plans taking place back at IRIS for a big mobilization. Possibly lock, stock, and barrel. The whole brigade."

"When, or _how_ will we know to start backtracking? Especially now with the air corridor unavailable?"

Pennington swallowed a hard lump, not knowing how to respond. Watson now looked like the man fishing for answers, like he hadn't been in command of the Abby this whole time.

"I wish I knew, sir. I would imagine we could send out a drone message direct to Mattis saying we're willing and able to proceed to withdrawal. I imagine the reply to that would spell out the rest, that is if there _is_ anything more."

Watson smirked at that, so it appeared. He sipped some more.

"I know this one's hard to stomach, sir, but you have to believe me."

His reply was instantaneous. "Captain Pennington, the day two officers can't trust one another is the day the UNSC is broken. Of course I believe you." Watson grimaced into his sipping glass. "Hell, Mombasa is all a crap shoot. It's anyone's city these days. I should've seen it two weeks ago myself. Been holding on too tight, I guess. And now we're waist deep in shit drinking coffee waiting for them to close in. Patrols give us solid intel, but piecing it all together expeditiously has been the challenge. Too much distance between those abandoned units out there. Too many scattered castles. I'd hate to leave it all behind but I feel that this battalion _is_ behind. We gotta start taking the final phase seriously now and Mattis, as usual, is spot-on. So how are we getting out of here? Or did Mattis leave that up to us to figure out?"

"Up to you," Pennington nodded. "Guess the trick is identifying and shutting down obstacles in your path."

"Our path." Watson appeared steely-browed in his response to Pennington. The Captain wouldn't know it, but it was a look heretofore unseen of the man this entire deployment to the Abby. Watson added, "You're here too."

"...Of course, sir."

Refocusing, Watson queued up a strip map of Mombasa on his monitor, panned all the way to the bleeding edge of it, said, "If we can just make it to the desert basin, we'll be in the clear. They could easily cover our retreat across that stretch. Now, we've got a pretty good idea of what's just beyond our line, but after about a klick or two out from that..." Watson shrugged. "Like I said...crap shoot."

"Reed's mentioning of that railroad he's going to build. That network of isolated units. It could work, taking them into the ranks. So, rather than positioning ourselves with those units to take more of Mombasa back, we instead absorb them and fight together toward IRIS. With enough personnel, we could march back toward that direction and start neutralizing whatever's in our way. Maybe enough to clear a safe LZ here or out there. We expand only Westward."

"I used to think we had a good LZ," Watson pointed a finger into the ceiling, "but the one that got away is going to lay all our cards out on the table for us to his Covie pals. If we're going forward with this, we're going to have to do it break-neck style. We'll be on the run. It's gonna be fast and dirty."

"That's a fair assessment. More than fair. Yes, it would take a while to re-establish landing zones. I suppose a road-blitz out of the city is better than nothing. Especially if what we think is happening is actually happening."

"What's that?"

"Losing turf one building and one street at a time. Being surrounded on all sides." Pennington muttered. "Waist deep in shit…"

"…drinkin' coffee…"

"Just… waiting." Pennington finished.

"Eh, well," Watson scoffed. "No telling what's waiting out there besides just triple-A and Banshees. Could be a horde of Brutes for all we know. To mobilize everything we've got...that's going to be a huge advertisement. We'll be the biggest target in both the new city and the old. We've got to be careful we don't overplay our hand even on retreating. Sad to admit."

"Well, time to pull out whatever aces you're holding."

"Indeed. And speaking of aces..." Watson finished off the drink with a swift gulp. "So, look, I probably come off as an easy going guy. Likely because all the officers under my command are resourceful and capable... _extremely capable..._ and so I let them do what they need to and not stand in their way which means my forte is to ask questions only when it's absolutely dire. That said, what is Lima's true purpose here? First night in, you all were like knights in shining armor. _She_ certainly was. Got everyone gleaming at her including myself. Only to find out now that we're just going back the way we came from."

"I know how you feel even if you think I don't."

"Guess we know how _Mattis_ feels about everyone out here. What gets me is that he sends _you_ to do his bidding, no offense."

"All I can say is what I know. You've all given so much, anyone can see that. There's no shame in knowing when to start saving yourselves. Sometimes it's only an outsider that can make you realize it."

"That what you're saying all along?"

"I'm saying I only know what I know. Sir, there's bigger priorities elsewhere. You were needed here, and you sure as hell delivered. Some would say beyond what you were capable of. But now, you're needed again in another tipping point. If we lose Voi, the UNSC I mean, that failure will be revisited here and it'll hit ten times harder than it does now."

Watson stroked his beard at that, nodding. "I've been told I can be stubborn at times. Maybe you're right."

"Whether I'm right or wrong in the end, you have to know you can't save everyone."

* * *

Liz all but skidded out of the loading bay, having frantically asked everyone in her way where she could find Reed. The lieutenant was out back chatting with a couple of his men, clipboard tucked beneath his arm when Liz marched up to him and growled: "What the hell did you do?"

"Only what you asked," he said. "Why?"

"You did the total opposite. I need you to come with me. _Now_."

Reed handed off the clipboard and followed her, her pace picking up some real speed. They took the stairs and headed towards one of the hospital wards. Meanwhile Liz berated the lieutenant under her breath the whole way there.

"I said keep it quiet, didn't I? I said only those who knew the man well."

"God dammit I did exactly that."

"You haven't heard what they're saying."

"Who? Who are you talking about?"

Liz led Reed down a hallway where the sound of angry commotion picked up. Harsh voices, the pounding of fists on a door buckling its hinges. Something smashed into many tinkling pieces. They turned a corner to find a number of men from the battalion surrounding a shut door. They kicked at it, hurled lightbulbs and finer things at it, teamed up to use furniture as battering rams.

Without slowing down Liz used her body weight to knock one man off balance and he tripped over a waiting room seat whose upside-down legs stuck out like a snare and caught him. He clattered to the ground, landing hard on his shoulder as Liz herself ended up on her hands and knees.

Reed hauled her back to her feet and put himself between them and her. The shouting stopped as the men stared him down but he took a menacing step forward, that gold bar on his placket displayed proud and resolute. Liz approached the door and peered through the broken glass partition. A filing cabinet and desk had been shoved up against it, and two orderlies were pressed up against the furniture preventing it from budging. Their arms and faces were bleeding, scraped up from the things that had been tossed through at them, those lightbulbs and lamps that exploded like hand grenades. Other hospital staff clustered together at the far end of the room, wide-eyed. The war had entered these halls all right.

Liz motioned for them to stay down and Reed eyed the soldiers who faced him, unflinching. Face reddening, he said, "Explain."

When nobody spoke, he again walked forward looking each man in the face, until he came to Doll Fraser herself right in the middle of the pack.

"You'd better fuckin' say something, Fraser."

Fraser glanced around before she met Reed's stare. She took a deep breath, licked her lips, and said, "They're killing our people, sir."

"Is this a joke?"

"I can prove it."

III

"Tell me you're not giving these rumours any due," Montclair said to Reed. She sat on the edge of her desk while Reed stood before her, his arms crossed. They were in The Bunker, the battalion's office space for its HQ support staff in the basement. It was all computer equipment and tables, paper bins, holo-displays and cables duct-taped across the floor.

Reed shook his head. "It's _a_ defense. Not sure if it's a good one or not, which makes it a problem in itself," he said. "Anything I should know about the soldiers involved?"

"Under review. Most of them were from Charlie so I'll discuss the matter with Alley when the situation in the city calms itself, I imagine," Montclair said. "As for you, you've got a problem of your own. Fraser was there."

"Yes ma'am. She says she just watched. Never took part."

"Except for inciting the whole mess."

"The way she tells it, she told one or two men that Private Shannon had died. It wasn't her idea to storm the ward—these men had suspicions from weeks ago of other malpractice."

"For god's sake."

"Anyway, it's unanimous from our side she never laid a hand on anyone, even heard she tried to stop 'em. Hospital staff couldn't identify her participating, not like the others involved, so what can I really do? And from what I hear, it was the hospital staff that physically prevented the group from entering the ward first."

"Our people went looking for a fight."

"Don't particularly disagree with that assessment. Started out with shoving, somehow turned into whatever the hell we just saw."

"So Fraser lit a spark and let fire season and a healthy dose of gasoline take the fuckin' wheel."

"She ain't blameless, no. But she knew the man, Shannon. I'll take some of the responsibility myself, I told her to inform his next-of-kin as a gesture, I guess. I didn't know how these men felt—what was brewing underneath. If I did I wouldn't have trusted Fraser with that information. But enlisted don't share much with me these days."

Montclair let out a frustrated noise. "I don't hold you accountable, Reed. Not a bit. Truth is, I heard rumblings about exactly this days ago. But I ignored it—most of us had a laugh over it—and you probably would have too. Hard to believe such a boneheaded story. A goddamned conspiracy? Fraser's been with us one night. What does that say about her, she jumps on the first crazy rumour that pops up? She's that impressionable? You tell me, Reed. She some kind of believer?"

"I don't think she's real crazy—just the regular kind from too much sun and too much dirt, our kind of gal if she didn't have the kind of history she does, followin' her around place to place—so that's the only thing that gives me even a second of pause. Anyone else, I wouldn't do them the courtesy of hearing out an explanation."

"I don't know, Reed. What else are we missing?"

"The men are saying there are injuries going untreated—or at least improperly treated. Not being given medications they ought to have been given. Guys go out to the line to get a second opinion from doctors in the medical company."

"And there are discrepancies?"

"Nothing caught my attention, not from what Fraser brought up. Eye-witnesses swear it, sure, but you could chalk it up to difference of opinion, misdiagnosis, or anything. None of those are criminal."

"The art of science, I suppose."

"What it comes down to," Reed agreed.

"I haven't had a single doctor on our side come to me with incidents. Nothing flagged in reports. Either it ain't worth time thinking about, or it's bunk, straight-up. Then again, I haven't gone over to talk to any of 'em myself. Can't trust documentation one-hundred percent these days, especially with what we have going on. Things get lost, left out, other priorities overshadow. Maybe they'll say different I jog their memory."

"Another thing, they're convinced the amount of men who've died under care of the hospital's doctors is far above the amount who've died under ours. It could be that the numbers are skewed—the guys who are hit the worst get sent directly to the hospital and of course a lot don't make it. But on a case-by-case basis, there've been a couple similar injuries that resulted in one death at the hospital but the other handled fine out in the field, and that's taking into account dirtier conditions and worse facilities."

"This hospital ain't exactly state of the art, neither."

"It could, again, come down to a difference of skill or luck, or any number of things. If I had to think like them, including things like—"

Montclair leaned back and looked at the lights above. "—letting 'em bleed out on the table. For instance."

"If being objective means considering all crackpot sides, yeah. That too, for instance." Reed shook his head. "Could be we've got one hell of a wizard with a scalpel out there in the line of fire, though, and that's messing with the stats, showing up whoever Faroush has."

Montclair pursed her lips. "You happen to catch the name of the army doc in charge of that case?"

"Captain Caskill, I think."

"I don't want to give this thing anymore life, but... it might be worth following up with him. See what he can tell us about the other similar case, get an expert opinion."

"Don't mind heading out there, if you want me to."

Montclair gave it some thought then shook her head. "Under normal circumstances I think I would, but this matter doesn't take precedence over the fact that the hospital has a lot more in the way of trouble to deal with if the Covies are indeed lurking around. You have your duties to attend to, I don't want to keep you any longer."

"Yes ma'am. But for what it's worth, to a large extent I think we should worry about keeping the peace. Not that it puts us outta sorts to just let it be, I think we'll be okay—but who knows how long we'll be stuck under the same roof together. Let's keep the war outside. Don't envy the guy who gets saddled with that responsibility, though."

"No, that falls to Watson, the poor bastard."

"You'll tell him what we've talked about?"

"I'll pass it on."

"Has Doctor Faroush said anything?"

"She's not happy about it. But neither is Watson happy one of his men is dead—and that he wasn't the first to know. She's been keeping secrets. I reviewed the incident with him but that's all. He'll need to meet with Faroush eventually, but he's screening her calls. Has guards posted outside The Bunker to stop her from entering until he can sort everything out. Decide what comes next."

"Are we thinking this might end the mission?"

"Can't say for certain. It might. It might not. Won't know until they talk things out but they both need some time to cool off, before either says or does something they regret. In the meantime, I'm busy fact-finding."

"I guess nobody's talked to any doctor on the civilian side, neither. To see how they might respond to these accusations."

"They might laugh."

"Wouldn't exactly prove the accusations wrong, though."

"No, but they don't need to prove anything. What we have for evidence is..."

"Crazy. It's crazy. No other way to describe it," Reed said.

"But our guys believe it, is the mutherfuckin' issue. Add to that, this ain't going to no court of law, not even a military one. There's just a lot of upset for no goddamn reason and no definitive way to end it."

"Covie is comin'. Everyone wishes like hell for distraction, anything to take their mind off that fact. Unfortunate that this is what it is. They're lashing out."

Montclair said, "Somebody should quash this but I don't see it going away, quagmire in itself. Nobody fuckin' wins, and we're already knee deep in it. The battalion has some good doctors but they're overburdened, and those civvy docs do some fine work. They patch us up and pull their weight. Think personally we owe them a lot and accidents, well, they happen. We talk about shipping 'em back to IRIS with the rest of the refugees but damn if that isn't an asset wasted. Between you and me, Reed, I'm the reason they're still here—I bumped those civilian flights for weeks even if that meant keeping on refugees and I won't apologize for it. I've made it clear to Watson and Faroush's staff—and the volunteer doctors—they belong to this mission as much as we do. This nastiness is just a drop in the bucket for all the good that's come of us working together."

"That's all it might take for this to blow up in our faces, sorry to say."

She nodded. "All we can do is try to prevent any more violence—make sure we don't kill each other before the Covies get here."

* * *

Doctor Faroush stalked through the ward, headed straight into her office and shut the door. Liz caught sight of the doctor going by as she finished bandaging up one orderly. She motioned for another nurse to come and take over, peeled off her gloves, and followed the doctor. She knocked and Faroush waved her in.

"Get the door."

"Did you talk to him?" Liz turned and placed her hands on her hips.

"He's busy. Hiding from me."

"We need him to come here and see the damage—see what they did. We haven't cleaned up the ward yet."

Faroush sank back into her chair. "Do you really think Lieutenant Colonel Watson is the kind of person who is going to be swayed by clutter and broken glass?"

"We were attacked."

"He is aware."

"And he still wouldn't see you?"

"You don't move the great military machine. You stand in its way occasionally—lie down in front of it if you'd like—but you can't move it. It stops for you or it doesn't. What are you hoping to get out of this, Elizabeth?"

"Anything. An apology. Acknowledgment."

"We'll get both of those things but they'll mean fuck-all. He'll say it right to my face but it won't mean anything, and I think he realizes that. He knows what we require and he's making every excuse not to grant us our request. He knows he doesn't have to do anything to ingratiate himself to us."

"If he wants to keep the peace he'll need to."

"Peace is when there is no more need for protest. This is not peace. It's an occupation."

Liz's lips twitched. Faroush was in one of her darker moods again, in the way she carried herself Liz hadn't seen since the opening days of the invasion. Her suspicions had subsided over the past couple of weeks when the days were busy and arising problems were solved swiftly, but with dwindling supplies and now actual violence, Faroush was beginning to put her guard back up. She could be dangerous this way. Liz said to her, "They can be reasoned with. They want the same thing as us."

"I'm not disputing that. They want to evacuate the city, and so do we. Are we safer with them? Unquestionably. They scare the Covenant away, but they're not up to the task anymore. You can sense it, can't you? Their skittishness. At the first sign of trouble, they will run."

"They promised that won't happen."

"Watson makes a lot of promises because talk is free. What the hell am I going to do to him when he comes back and says oops, I made a mistake? I can yell and scream all I want but it won't change anything. The man is on top and answers to someone I've never seen or talked to—might as well be their God almighty. He grants us life or condemns us to death with one conversation. Watson might not want to leave but it's not up to him. It's up to none of these people here. Their protection is one step from non-existent—gone suddenly, if some supreme power ordains it to be."

"They'll take us with them."

Faroush glowered. "Another promise."

"They wouldn't abandon us."

"There are over one hundred and fifty four refugees in the hospital now. Unless Watson's men are the brave little soldiers they say they are and give up their seats on the life-rafts, there will be people left behind. My people. They say they'll do it, but when the moment comes, that will be the true test. I predict mutiny before Watson will order them to stay because who are we to them? We're not part of their tribe. We come second and always will. I've seen mercy and charity, but I've seen the opposite as well. And if we're judging the great UNSC on merit alone, them and myself, you know I have my reservations."

"Because of Acadia," Liz said, hushed.

Faroush had told Liz stories—she grew up with them. At the height of Innie-fever, the end years of the UNSC's massive crackdown operation TREBUCHET brought the war on terror to the doctor's home world when she was sixteen years old. As the neighbouring Eridanus worlds waged open warfare with the naval and marine forces, the UNSC sent a warship to the remote Acadia to root out and destroy any insurrectionist cells, arrest sympathizers, and pacify the populace. Lea Faroush was among the hundreds of thousands prodded past checkpoints into zones, ghettos, and camps where men with sniper rifles perched on rooftops—they focussed spotlights after curfew and shot on sight. Other men kicked in doors and dragged screaming people onto the streets, tossed them into trucks—you would have thought they were Innies themselves or were harbouring them somehow, the way they shook and fought back like they were guilty, it didn't matter, the good guys would get to the bottom of it and there was nowhere to hide. Don't try, or else.

That was an occupation. Faroush was a refugee to Earth; Liz was an immigrant. They carried with them the story of their home and its people who suffered, and Watson would just have to learn for himself that Faroush would not break her promise: she wouldn't leave the people under her protection to die.

But once more she increasingly felt how she did when she was younger, and angrier—the woman who did lend a hand when finally Acadia snapped out of its persecuted stupor, picked up handguns and long rifles, and battled in alleyways and street corners; they tossed bombs and gunned down targets, they got caught and got tortured.

A part of Lea Faroush as a person was dedicated to knowing how to hurt a huge, untouchable institution like the military without firing a shot. She couldn't un-know these things. She never killed anyone but she'd been taught how to—she'd helped others to. She'd grown up in a violent world that was a different kind of violence than what Liz saw: the Covenant war that had already broken out before she was born. Liz saw humanity band together no matter what because all life was precious when put up against otherworldly trials, and Faroush bore witness to this too, but to her it felt disingenuous, fragile like a distracting veneer. You can't unsee what's there: the truth. Liz was proud of her heritage and culture, Acadian always, but she was young. Twenty-four. Liz understood their shared history, but she could never _really_ understand. Or not yet.

"I know you've become friendly with some," Faroush said to Liz, "but remember who they report to. You deal with one, you're not dealing with just them but in fact the UNSC Army. We're at their mercy, to do with what they please. Watson would like nothing more than to get us out of this warzone and out of his way—he won't try to find reasons for us to stay, he won't deliver justice over what happened in the ward."

"But what if we _need_ to go?" Liz asked. "What if the soldiers leave because fighting isn't an option? Do you expect us all to wait for the Covenant to come and... what? We die here?"

"No, but if another day means welcoming in one more soul, it'll have been worth it. I won't run before we're supposed to. I need to be sure Watson is on the level with us. I need to be here if the evacuation continues—if this wasn't all just a false alarm."

"You think they might be bluffing."

"And I'm calling them on it, if they are. I told Watson I won't leave until he does—and he won't until I do. If my decision is what's keeping the hospital open and the mission going forward, then I stand by it. If they haven't run yet, they must be holding out hope there's a chance of recovery, that things might not be as bad as they could be. There are a lot of what-ifs being thrown around, but nobody is certain of anything. So it's important for me to be firm and to be here, for these displaced people. I make sure they're fed, that their needs are seen to... that their voices are heard. They're not just a quantity or a number to be problem-solved. Not objectives to be taken, crammed together and shipped off like _things_ in the next wacky scheme they think of. I recognize that they're people. The UNSC won't. I can't trust they'll do the same job we've done. If they had their way Mombasa would be forgotten. A tomb."

"The people I've become friends with—the soldiers—they believe in us. They're doing everything they can to stay. They're our allies. We're not alone in this, Aunt Lea."

"Watson says the same. I believe him too, most days. But just remember it's not up to him, and those who feel as Watson does are outliers. Anything we can do to get ahead we should consider because it's only becoming clearer and clearer every hour we're here: we cannot rely on the military, only ourselves."

* * *

"Got movement out there—our guys. Looks like Sword's on the move, sir."

Captain Stern glanced across the room at the sentry whose face was buried in his pair of field glasses. "In which direction?"

"Convoy of hogs headed down the highway back towards us." The soldier tracked the vehicles for a moment. "Got a couple taking the exit. Come to visit us I guess."

Stern scooped up his helmet and said, "Have somebody flag them down and send 'em here." He headed outside, onto the balcony and down a flight of concrete stairs to reach the street. He was headquartered in this housing project overlooking the highway while Shield was spread out over the city blocks outwards from his position. They were about 15 kilometres from the hospital. Sword was, until a few minutes ago, charged with defending the blocks on the opposite side of the roadway. So where the hell were they going?

As the two warthogs cut their speed and worked their way around a set of barriers, Stern lit a cigarette and waited for them to pull up to the curb. Captain Ortiz, Sword's CO, climbed down from the vehicle.

"You get yourselves turned around?" Stern said.

Ortiz chuckled. "I'm not here for long. Somewhere we can sit?"

"Up here. I think you'll like what I've done with the place." Stern made a motion for him to follow and started back up the stairs.

Their boots crunched on broken glass and Ortiz glanced down. "Shoes on or off?"

When the two men reached the balcony, Ortiz unfurled a roadmap. "New defensive play courtesy of SIGINT, or what passes for it anyway. I got word they pulled data from those audio sensors in this area here, between us and Charlie. Thought it best I come show you in person so that we could better coordinate."

"We have eyes on at all?"

"Couple of scouts waiting on the approach. They say there are definitely Covies tripping those alarms, visual confirmation, but they're not making a move yet. Still can't tell force strength and size of what's maybe hanging back but it's a good bet that's where they're going to hit. They could be waiting 'til dark."

"Not long to go, then," Stern said, noting the cooling air, the sundown glow. "I take it the sensors did their job."

"They told us nothing we didn't already know, but I guess somebody's gotta respond. They're sending me."

"Sword's going to fill the gap?"

"Two platoons at least. I send any more I'll be leaving Shield open for a flank."

Stern studied the map, noting the positions of both companies and their respective platoons. "That'll leave us stretched thin here on the highway."

"If the sensors are right, the Covies might well bypass it entirely and leave you alone. This intel pays off, Watson'll have fucked up leaving you here."

"I don't understand that. If the Covenant is gearing up for a push this the best way to get armour where they'd want it. They have to realize that. You seize roadways and bridges for a damn reason."

"Maybe they realize if they're thinking it, we're thinking it. They'll assume you've got the highway locked down so they're thinking outside the box. A longer way to go for 'em, and any armour they bring'll be pretty boxed in—open to flanking fire—but it is unconventional like hell."

"Well I don't buy it."

"Covies aren't playing by the old rules. We haven't seen any real armoured fighting yet. If it keeps up this battle will be decided by ground infantry and the war in the air."

"Fucked on that front too."

"So it comes down to us. It might just come down to the Covies brute-forcing it. "

"Always does. But they even have Battalion in a funk, perplexed as to why they haven't rained down hell on us, first of all. Then if they're bypassing the highway, they'd need to make sure the way was secure and the hell it ain't, I made damn sure of it. Why even move troops into the city if their goal is wholesale slaughter?" Stern shook his head. "Not very efficient. Too much doesn't add up."

"Wish I had answers but I'm afraid you'll need to take it upstairs with Big Chief Montclair. I'm supposed to be on my way."

"I'll talk to someone about it. If you're shifting over, I'll need to do the same. I can't leave this highway under-defended. Not if it's a straight shot through like this. It'll gut us if they seize control of it."

Ortiz pointed at the map. "These men on the edge—what are they doing?"

Stern squinted. "There's an AA position out there. I've got men close enough to respond to Covie presence, but we're still a drive away. Watson set it up as part of his umbrella. Should've gone behind my line but he wanted coverage—in case they tried to dive-bomb the hospital once more. Well he's got it now, but there's almost no overlapping field of fire. We lose it, we have a pretty gaping hole in our roof."

"Why doesn't he set up a position on top of the hospital? As insurance?"

"It pokes the Covenant enough, they'll call down an orbital strike. He's trying not to make the hospital a bigger damn target than it already is." Stern eyed the marker on the map and shook his head. "Anyway, I'll talk to Battalion."

"Tell 'em about the highway."

"I ain't backing down, Ort."

"Never thought for a second you would. I hope you're right, just so you can say that you were—and so they come for you, not us." Ortiz grinned, folded up his map, and sauntered back down the stairs. "Good luck, Stern."

Stern told one of his men inside the command post to get a hold of the major over the shortwave comm. Down on the street he noticed a soldier walking by. Her red hair stuck out from under her helmet, bobbing as she moved.

He leaned over the balcony and called to her: "Lake!" He placed his cigarette back in his mouth and beckoned for her to come up. She doubled-timed it, mounting the staircase rapidly, taking care to leave her rifle at the foot of the steps.

Staff Sergeant Erica Lake stood before him at the ready. She looked eager, like she knew already that Stern had something for her to do and she was restless enough to want to do it—looked forward to it. More than that, she looked impatient, like he wasn't moving fast enough for her. He hadn't yet requested Montclair's feedback about his proposed move, but he figured it wouldn't hurt to get a jump on this. He was most central to the issue, after all.

"Stokes has you doing anything important?" he asked.

"Define important, sir."

"A top secret mission making sure Shield doesn't suddenly drop dead in the next minute or so."

"Certainly not."

"Good. On both counts. I want you to drive out to these grid coordinates. Take one of the trucks. I'm going to reposition that AA hardware that's there, move it somewhere we can keep a better eye on it."

"For what reason, sir?"

"Moving a platoon right over there," Stern told her, nodding towards the other side of the highway. "Can't hold that same AA position once I do. So you load it up, truck it back."

"Is this mission volunteer only, sir? Do I need to inform my loved ones?"

"Just get it done."

"It's a great and noble undertaking."

* * *

Fraser had been told by Reed to get back down to the warehouse and lie low. He said he believed she was blameless in the incident and maybe didn't know better, that the whole thing was a misunderstanding because everyone was on edge so he'd give her the benefit of the doubt.

He shouldn't have done that.

Fraser knew exactly what she was doing. More than that, she wasn't finished. When she asked Reed what he was going to do about Henry Shannon he said best to just drop it. He talked to Montclair and that was what they decided on so that was final. The matter was going to be handled. Reed said he wasn't taking sides—it was a shame about Shannon, but Covie killed him, not a doctor. Fraser questioned that. She had her reasons and she knew things Reed didn't, things probably Montclair and Watson didn't either...

Like, for instance, that members of the hospital staff were supplying soldiers from the battalion with drugs—opioids and all. Her old friends told her this, the men from Charlie she hung with last night who all welcomed her back with tight hugs and loose grins. Booze was hard to come by, though most soldiers kept bottles of stuff hidden away that they had traded for in the early days when units passed by with fresh stores of supplies looking for souvenirs recovered from the frontline (nobody talks about it but all those empty homes in the city, of course the battalion men broke into and ransacked them during patrols while their platoon leaders turned a blind eye. They looted practical things or useless relics that looked like they might be expensive, anything somebody might get a kick out of having).

And booze went too quickly as it often seemed to do. The war weighed too heavy to keep thinking about, so they didn't. They kept their minds off it any way they could. The war was a hoot when you were this fucked up, and painkillers were more potent than any whiskey-buzz. She'd seen what the war did to high-strung guys, men who had been fighting for years as well as boys who were experiencing the bloody fucking grind for the first time, wide-eyed. Reed and the officers wouldn't broadcast the fact that at least thirty enlisted committed suicide over the course of the Aurelia campaign. When the going was tough—with no end in sight—they killed themselves. When the fighting wrapped up and there were days of peace, time alone to really think about this war and maybe what was coming next, they killed themselves. They walked into the smoky woods somewhere and did it. Messy sometimes, with an upturned rifle or pistol, or the pull of a grenade pin; or clean and quiet, a serene place to sit and shoot up and just fade away.

It happened to a boy in Fraser's section when she was a sergeant in Shield and she was the one who found him and carried him back.

When she told Stern, he kissed her (she kissed him back) and swept the whole thing under the rug "for the good of the comp'ny" and Fraser had a drink or a few. Too many. She never accepted the way her superiors had handled it, Stern included, and that was her downfall. Her ouster from Shield Company, she'd brought that on herself but never once did she think she was solely to blame. She still didn't. Thirty enlisted killed themselves and this was 1st Battalion alone. Just Aurelia. She'd heard stories about Cassandra too.

And then there was Woody—Corporal Woodrow—from a whole other front... she never asked for specifics but she knew that he'd tried to do himself in before she met him. She didn't know what hell he'd lived through to make him one day decide to go ahead and do it. And she didn't know if she was thankful he hadn't succeeded because after Aurelia she understood torment. The UNSC was so vast, and so full of broken people, and nobody talked about it. The officers didn't want you talking about it. It was taboo. And that was why, she suspected, they never clamped down on the amount of self-medication going on under their noses.

There was a breaking point for everyone and dulling the senses was one way to stretch that out, make things feel all right—like you maybe weren't going to die in an hour or tomorrow. After Aurelia she understood all that. The need for that.

The men in Charlie Company had their reason to be suspicious of the hospital staff here at the Abby because they had nothing but time to get high and speculate wild, paranoid theories, having ruminated for days. Fraser listened to them last night and she wasn't entirely convinced they had any truth to them but she heard them out still, and they drank and smoked and laughed into the night.

"The docs here," they told her, "take medicine for pills. Don't tell Reed." —Fraser promised she wouldn't— "They want the life-saving shit in return, the stuff you can't really use to y'know, tune in, drop out. They'll take it no questions asked."

So when they were out that way, near the line, returning from patrols or just departing, the men stole supplies from the battalion's field hospital that was run by the 906th's medical company to trade with the Abby staff here. When they ran out of liquor last night they popped open baggies and continued from there. They thought it was strange, this arrangement, because the battalion did supply the hospital with those same medicines after previous supply runs, supposedly distributed evenly. Because of that it was suspicious that so many of their buddies had ended up dying from innocuous wounds here, they said. Like they goddamn weren't even trying, those civvy docs. They had the means to save all those men—supposedly—but they just simply didn't, maybe because they couldn't stomach the cost: civilian lives were precious and soldiers' were not. Maybe it was the booze or the pills that made the idea seem more sensible but they seemed to agree. They all swore to look out for each other.

Private Henry Shannon had been among these men. The floor had collapsed on him this morning, and he'd been whisked to the emergency room in the waiting hands of Abby doctors. That was the last time anyone saw him. Fraser broke the news he'd passed, and those Charlie Company men wanted to get even because no one else died in the attack today, just him. Even the civilian refugees in the overflow wing who they heard looked way worse off, having been crushed by the same floor that killed Henry Shannon, they would all pull through. The men didn't know who was responsible so everyone there was to blame. That was their reason and Fraser did little to stop them. In some way she too wanted to settle the score, angry that any one of them had been violently taken, but the Covie who crashed his aircraft was dead, leaving only the hospital staff who couldn't save him (or who chose not to). After the incident in the ward, she apologized to Reed because she thought the men had overreacted.

Then Reed told her the matter was handled. That he and Montclair were handling it their way and no one else needed to get involved. The gossip as well needed to be curbed. Let the man die a dignified death, he just about said to her. He didn't actually say this but it felt as though he did. It left a bitter taste in her mouth. Reed said Shannon's death shouldn't be sensationalized. It happened, and it was better it happen to us than them—them being the civilians. Because that would mean the end of this mission. You understand the importance of this mission, don't you? he'd said to her. Fraser went glassy eyed and bit her tongue because she heard those words the same way she heard Stern say "for the good of the comp'ny" all those months ago. She said yes sir and went about her duties, counting fucking bullets into fucking magazines.

But she headed back up to the ward now—one specific floor of it. She had others with her, a small group this time. Captain Alley had already taken disciplinary action against the others involved earlier, sent them to the frontline or dropped them into hard-labour company, and these men had heard all about it and were disgruntled as much as she was.

She knew where to go—it wouldn't be a repeat of the haphazard scene caused today—because Reed had assigned two men from his platoon as security detail for one man of the hospital staff. A favour from him to Liz-the-nurse.

But it inadvertently outed this person as the man responsible for Private Shannon's death. Word from around Dog Company made its way back to Fraser. They didn't feel all that differently from the men in Charlie. They gave him up without even being asked to.

When she reached the man's office, there was a look of complete understanding she shared with the two Dog Company soldiers who stood guard. They stepped aside and she and her Charlie Company posse slipped into the room and locked the door. They yanked him from his chair and, holding his wrist flat against the desk, shattered his delicate surgeon's fingers with a hammer.

Fraser had sat in the seat across from him and watched, impassive. She was here not because she truly believed this man had deliberately murdered a friend but because she knew the matter wouldn't be handled—not by Reed or Montclair or Watson—even though they said it would be. She was here for the young soldier under her command who went relatively peacefully back on Aurelia, who'd had enough and given up. Who everyone had forgotten about but she never would. And for Henry Shannon, who she'd been told to forget about because his name now, too, was taboo. This was a message to those who told her to forget, and to herself: fuck you, never forget.

She chewed on her lip and when the men looked at her for what to do with the trembling, sobbing doctor next, after considering, she said, "He could be a leftie."

IV

Doctor Faroush stormed into The Bunker, elbows tucked and postured for war, and she muscled her way past Watson's bodyguards. Montclair saw her coming and hastily told the men to let her past.

"Where is he?" Faroush said to the major.

Montclair gestured towards his office and waved her through. Seeing her approaching through his open door, Watson stood and met her outside. He looked like he'd been expecting her.

Voice quiet, he said, "Let's talk."

"You're a son of a bitch."

Heads in The Bunker turned at this. Montclair looked like she was about to head towards them to intervene on his behalf but Watson subtly motioned they were fine. He ushered Faroush inside his office and shut the door. He said, "I'll take that one. You're upset."

"I was upset three hours ago. What do you think I am now?"

"I do regret not having this conversation sooner."

"What good would that have done? You'd make me more promises? Maybe more sweet lies?"

Watson took a seat but not behind his desk, and motioned for Faroush to sit as well. These were old armchairs from when the hospital was a hotel, now tucked into the corner of his office. It was as good a concession he could make, a tiny gesture, though one he'd never put forward after all this time. Their shoes were nearly touching each others' and there was no hiding. He leaned forward and said, "I want to be clear: in no way have I lied to you, Doctor. Willingly or otherwise. We both have ideals."

"We agreed to cooperate, for one."

"There've been growing pains, admittedly."

"It's an infection," Faroush said, "that needs to be located and neutralized, if not excised entirely. Before it does too much damage. It might be too late."

"This is as far as they'll go. The men today were emotional, under a lot of stress."

"Grief I understand. Greater propensity towards violence as a coping mechanism I also understand, sadly. But a targeted attack? This was spite. This is one of my best trauma surgeons on sabbatical, perhaps for the rest of his life. But of course he can't just leave and go home."

"We're gonna get to the bottom of what exactly happened. Those responsible will be rotated out of the hospital."

"Now you know that's not possible. We're boxed in and they can't be sent away. They need to be locked up."

"Given the situation outside, that's not an option."

"And what is the situation outside?" Faroush said. "Has it changed since we spoke this morning?"

Watson had to shake his head. The same tension they'd felt following the Banshee attack hadn't lessened, but it hadn't amounted to anything real yet. "We're still on high alert."

"Colonel I appreciate that you have better things to do than deal with this kind of bullshit. It's beneath you. And it's beneath me to need to take my complaints and nail them to your door."

"Point made, Doctor. And we're not that bad."

"This can't continue. The foundation of our arrangement is violently splintering before our eyes. So I'd like you to tell me: what can be done?"

Watson pursed his lips. There were solutions—there always were solutions, you just had to want to do them. He firmly believed that. But this was a sensitive issue, one where he was on the wrong side of it—he was the one giving something up. He needed to reign in his people, but he needed to do it to the doctor's satisfaction and he had that feeling short of a public execution in the town square, there was little else she would accept. Normal disciplinary measures were to be expected: extra duties and reassignment, or demotion and time in The Stockade which had all but become hard-labour company now, undermanned as they were—no one was allowed to sit out this war. He was fully prepared to punish the men (and woman) responsible but those admitted slaps on the wrist didn't guarantee there would be no more threats of violence and Faroush would hammer him on this.

"I assure you, again, measures I personally deem appropriate will be taken to prevent any more violence. Beyond that…"

"That means nothing to me. Or my staff who are owed so much more than that," Faroush said. "You can't jail your men or compensate my doctor for damages. We can't even get a restraining order, legal or otherwise—it doesn't matter who you leave in the hospital, the sentiment remains. It gets passed on and will come back worse, the harder you clamp down. They'll despise us for your punishments because you they can't come after. You they can't hurt. The men who were supposed to be protecting my doctor were from a different company and they were complicit in the assault. They stood aside and let it happen. This tells me the issue can't be contained like you hope."

"What issue exactly are we talking about?"

"Don't play coy. Not now, not after everything that's happened. I know about the rumours going around, that your people believe mine are deliberately prioritizing civilian care—or worse: somehow killing yours."

"Then you'll know how far out these rumours are—they're beyond my control and I don't want to entertain them."

"Take them seriously. Because those in question—who are of the opinion that what we've done is malicious or prejudiced—are dangerous. And they're armed."

"Best I can do is punish them for crossing the line and that's precisely what I'm doing. Anything else is pre-emptive which gives into the hysteria and does not do away with it."

Faroush shook her head. "They will do it again. They will try to get even again and again, then at what point is 'too far?'"

"I prefer we never find out."

"But I hold that we will, regardless of what you want. And then the only one who loses is me. This can't continue. I'll tell you right now I won't let it. If it becomes apparent we can't work together, then maybe we shouldn't."

Watson narrowed his eyes. "I want you to speak real clear and elaborate on what you mean by that."

"This is my house. You rent my basement. I am all for putting in the hours to work together and we've been doing so without considerable issue for weeks. It's just unfortunate everything is coming to a head at this hour, but that won't allow you to dismiss us so easily. Now, we've taken blows by your hand—" Faroush cut Watson off when he started to protest. "—rogue actions by a rebellious element, of course, and I'm sure there's another one coming. You'd be blind or an idiot if you didn't see it. I'd at least like to cover up if we're going to get kicked in the belly."

"Do you trust any one of my people?"

"I'd be lying if I said any one and fully. Not even you."

"What if I allowed you to handpick security from my battalion?"

"I would assume your best men are out there, fighting the fight. There is nobody left except for your paper-pushers and less-than-ideals. And you providing the hand that shields us does little but cover our eyes for the other fist to come down freely. This job of protection needs to fall to us. You know what I want."

Faroush was talking about weapons. In truth Watson was planning on arming the able-bodied refugees if the hospital came under siege—a proper Alamo—but now the context had shifted, and not in a way Watson was prepared to even consider. But to refuse her now would be obtuse, another disappointment that further split apart their united-front leadership. For good reason or no.

"I wasn't lying when I said I'd consider it but you have to understand the concerns I have about untrained civilians armed with loaded weapons."

"Your concerns rank similarly to my fears about yet another disgruntled soldier marching in and this time quite possibly deciding to shoot up my ward. This has been an open-carry base for as long as you and your men have been here, but only your people have firearms. I have former law enforcement within the group of refugees—they'll captain my security, neutral as can be. Their weapons were seized and handed over to your people at my behest when I put equal security for all of my refugees at the utmost priority—the lawful, dare I say civilized, way of doing it. But the truth is we all feel unsafe and your people aren't up to the task required of them. There is no trying harder or promising to do better, I'm afraid. It's come to this. You either agree or you don't."

Watson studied the woman playing some kind of hard-ball. It was an impossible situation where both of their fears might be actualized, where his men might disobey yet another direct order and take out their frustrations on the civilian staff fueled by nasty, unsubstantiated rumours that weren't going away anytime soon, and Faroush was right: next time might be worse. It was no way for servicemen and women to behave, he agreed with all that. But then there was the other possibility, that the troublemakers in the battalion come for another fight and meet with actual resistance in the form of guns wielded by angry civilians, and put into their hands by their own military CO, no less. This time they'd lose. And if there were soldier deaths? What the hell then? Even in rightful self-defense, it would be a betrayal of his own people. Like the doctor he was committed to making sure both groups got along peacefully, but it was just as important he stay strong at the head of 1st Battalion, 906th Brigade because it was sewn onto his jacket and that meant what you'd think it means. Did he agree with her or did he not? Well, to answer her question, firmly seated in his position of power and everything else that came with it, he said, almost hushed: "What _if_ I don't?"

Faroush looked taken aback, but she meant what she said earlier and she was no pushover. She'd fought her own wars. She replied, "If we cannot work together, then just as I said, maybe we shouldn't. I mean exactly that. If we cannot aid you without being suspected of malpractice and attacked for it, we won't aid you at all. You're welcome to remain in my basement and play in my yard but my doctors and nurses, my medical supplies and equipment—my operating rooms—will be closed off to you."

"There's a battle coming," Watson growled. "And you're making threats?"

"I know your military doctors are under enough pressure as they are. We want to help. It's your people who don't want our help. So, unless you put a gun to our heads, we will not scrub in. We will bandage nothing and stitch up no one."

"Then you'll really be killing my men."

"The Covenant will be killing your men."

"Your staff will just stand by and watch us bleed out because you tell them to?"

"I'm not the one voting along party lines. My people are afraid of your people." Faroush's face darkened in a way Watson hadn't witnessed before. It chilled him when she said, "It's your boots on our necks."

Right then, there was a knock on the door. A member of the support staff poked his head in and said, "Sir, there's a situation on the line. It's being monitored."

Watson said, "Give me a minute."

The man left and Watson turned back to Faroush. There was no resolution to be found. But perhaps compromise, or more likely, a stalling tactic. He said to her, "How about we do this: I'm willing to let you muster your own security—"

"Armed security."

"—provided you'll allow me one request first. And I don't think it's unreasonable."

"What, dammit?"

"Let my people take a look at the body. The one that kicked off this whole mess. I want them to determine exactly how Private Shannon died."

"I told you—"

"I'm not a doctor. You can tell me anything and I'll probably believe you. No, you'll tell it to a real M.D. and he or she, upon delivering to me their findings, will decide if I officially believe you or not. Call it a second opinion. That's it. That's all I've got to offer but it's a good one... if there's nothing to hide."

Watson stood and began to move to the door. Faroush cast a hard look at him. Her voice stony, she said, "I thought you didn't believe in the rumours."

"I want you to know myself and my officers had nothing to do with the proliferation of these rumours and we certainly don't condone any of it, or what's happened to your staff because of them. We're doing our best to put a stop to them." He held the door open for Faroush to leave, gesturing her out. "But me, personally, I think finding definitive proof is one way to do just that. You either agree with me or you don't."

* * *

The sunlight was fading fast by the time Lake reached the anti-aircraft position. She'd driven by a dozen warthogs from the Shield platoons Stern was repositioning. Farther down the street, she saw the building in question: a small, homespun grocery store. Seven men on the rooftop milled around and watched as she pulled the truck out front and killed the engine. She hopped out and headed inside, annoyed they weren't already waiting for her with the hardware on the curb.

Immediately she found there was a problem. The men who were from Dog Company had taken the guided missile system apart—the M95-B Lance—but even in pieces it was enormous. Its original variant was powerful enough to put a hole in Covenant space vessels. This weapon was more manageable, though meant to be towed by a pintle-hook vehicle with a great deal more torque than her warthog or mounted on a flatbed truck, so still they had this predicament. The technicians did their best, but they couldn't get it through the door and down the stairs.

They explained to her the Lance had been airlifted in earlier by a Falcon utility chopper from the 10th Air Cav based at the hospital. It would take another airborne vehicle with a cable and winch system to get it back off. (Lake suggested simply throwing it down off the roof to save time... They asked her if she knew how much this weapon cost the Army—it was ruggedized to a limit.) When they were told they would need to move the missile system, they had assumed Lake would be arriving by air. Someone had neglected to tell Stern the logistics that involved setting up this AA position in the first place because it was technically under Dog Company's purview, making this a fool's errand on Lake's part. Still she was told to give the Dog Company men assistance and a ride back to the line. All they had to do now was wait for that Falcon to get here. She didn't like the ETA on it, and fell back on her training; she told one man to post up farther down the road as a look-out. She felt too exposed out here despite the buildings that surrounded them. It was terrible for their line of sight, but the Lance was mostly computer controlled anyway.

It wasn't long before the man came streaking back, out of breath. He managed out: "They're coming. Covie platoon. Forty plus. With light armour and Phantoms on approach."

Jesus. Fuck.

Lake remained brave-faced like she always did when there were eyes on her. "How long until they get here?"

"Ten, fifteen minutes for the ground troops."

There wasn't a force on the move that large the whole day. Why now? Lake wondered if they'd seen the men from Shield shift to cover the highway and decided this was where they were going to probe, like they'd been watching the defensive line as keenly as the troops had been watching them. Now, it was clear to Lake this wasn't a recon manoeuvre with a chance of flash-skirmish. This was a fight. They were coming for blood.

"What do we do, Sergeant?" the soldier asked.

Lake had studied Watson's anti-aircraft umbrella and knew the coverage area for each missile system. With just one inactive, those Phantoms would identify the weakness, slip through unimpeded and devastate the unity of the line, if not the hospital itself given the current shuffle of ground cover being orchestrated by Stern and the others.

Ten, fifteen minutes was all they had and it wasn't enough.

"Tell them to set up the Lance again," she said. "Get it online. Don't argue."

Lake leaned inside her truck and retrieved her rifle. When she returned to the roof, the technicians screwed together the machinery, bewildered. The others looked at her like she was crazy.

"If they're sending aircraft this way, they don't know we're here. They don't know what we have here. They think they're striking at Shield's unprotected flank right now. We're going to show them how wrong they are."

There was no verbal protest. The men shared looks with one another, as if waiting for someone else to speak up, but no one did. They all understood but chose not to think about it. Even the techs hunched over their work and continued silently.

Two men she put downstairs near the windows facing the street. The rest stayed on the roof with her, keeping low. They unhooked grenades and kept them close by their sides.

"Don't fire that thing until I say so," Lake told the men readying the Lance. They too had rifles and sub-machine guns nearby for when the Covenant closed in.

They were coming. Lake could hear them now, the rustle and clank of their armour with every stomp; she could make out their helmets that glinted in the final rays of sunlight. She kept out of sight as they wound down the narrow street that would take them right past the grocery store. She had driven the truck elsewhere so the area looked deserted and sad like the rest of the city and the aliens would march on without skipping a beat. The grocery store itself was cracked and dilapidated (and not because of recent street combat) and made excellent camouflage for the soldiers to carry out their ambush.

The Covies were caught out in the open when she sprang up and began to heckle them with a few trigger pulls, letting loose evenly with her rifle downrange. The others followed right after her. She was already fishing for a new magazine by the time the Covenant spotted them and returned fire. Some had just dropped dead, the shock of bullet impact causing them to seize up and teeter over. The Covies who fell down wounded craned their necks and cast dazed looks at the dead ones, then they shuddered—little holes blown in them—when the soldiers shot them again and again. Hails of bullets licked the street as though a hundred soldiers were entrenched here. With the noise and confusion that came with a gunfight, the men shot at everything for fear they were still alive and could sit up and kill them at any moment. Lake drilled their crumpled forms too, a round apiece. Then she switched targets as more Covenant hustled down the road seeking shelter and ducking into alleys. Some she got, some made it to safety. But there were still more coming, kept pushing forward. They were definitely here to contest this turf. She peered over the edge at the heads of enemy troops running for cover around the side of their building.

She and her men dropped grenades over the side and into the street and they went off one after the other. A Brute soldier, fur matted from shrapnel wounds, stumbled forward and the men opened up on him. They got him in the leg and then his arms when they flew up on instinct to protect its face. The bum limb dragged and arm flailed for about three steps, and it looked rather comical before the side of his head blew outward with a loud crack. It was unclear who finished him off.

There were other Brutes nearby, though, and they tossed their own grenades: one on the roof that somebody was able to rip out of the soft tarred shingles and throw over the side just in time, and another inside the store. When this one exploded everyone heard the screams of the two men who were there. They emerged in the doorway to the roof, one holding the other up. This man who could not stand was bleeding from the stomach, the spike already dislodged and letting loose blood and bile. His mouth was bleeding too. He only looked stunned and said nothing once he was set down. The one who could still fight looked stunned in the same delirious way and Lake saw he was also bleeding, maybe hurt even worse than the first man because metal stuck out from his chest and when he breathed you could hear the faint slurp of fluid making its way into his lungs and killing him slowly, but he racked his rifle and thumped back down the stairs, back into it at least for a little while longer.

Covenant fire amplified in volume. They had taken up positions in buildings across from them and fired down at them. Lake picked them off as they appeared in windows. The Dog Company men flung flares into the area surrounding the store, illuminating any enemies making their way up the street in the worsening darkness, who were doing their best to surround the place. Barking out to each other in their glottal tongues, they tromped forward through the reddish haze, tripping over the other dead Covenant troops before them, braving the hail Lake and her men poured down on them. Their sparking, smoking tracer-tinged gunfire hacked at the street and ping-ponged through the confined approach, through the kicked-up dust slicing into the aliens at every angle. Farther down the ground vehicles had been diverted, not wanting to be stuck in the kill zone Lake and her people had set up, but were most likely working their way around to catch them from behind any minute now.

But that concern was instantly forgotten when she heard the shrieking engine noise of Covenant aircraft somehow overpowering the gunfire coming from high and away. Leaning out and gazing towards the darkening sky, she saw the bloated shapes of three Phantom gunships bearing down on them. One rose above the crest of the taller buildings and Lake stared deeply into the intense glow of its crackling gravity drive. They were going to fly right over them and deliver all kinds of hell straight down.

Lake had stalled long enough, given them enough harassment to turns heads and draw them all in. She'd wanted this. The Covenant, she surmised, had spent the entire day scoping out the battalion's defenses, looking for their AA missile systems. They sensed weakness and Lake had kept her cool, held her fire until the last possible moment, daring them to come and get a little closer. Now the aircraft had dashed into the gap, confident they were in the clear—they could get close enough to deliver their payloads of vehicles and hardened shock troops whose purpose it was to find and eliminate the other AA positions with the kind of free-for-all savagery they were known for in close quarter fights, cause unbelievable disarray inside the umbrella.

—Over her dead body.

Lake finally gave the order. The Lance had already acquired all targets and the men from Dog Company activated its fire control in an instant like it couldn't possibly happen any later. Three missiles lit up and went off, their awful screeching causing everyone to grab their ears and yell in pain or grit their teeth. The ordnance went like their namesake and one-two-three ripped through the armoured underbellies of the Phantoms, holing them completely—causing their blown-out, mid-air wrecks to careen sideways, nosedive and flatten entire structures—and after they were grounded, there was a hush. Lake's hearing was muffled. A soldier leaned into the stairway and fired off a long burst she felt more than heard. Everything was dark, not because the sun had lowered fully, but because the entire block had filled with thick smoke released by the rockets and collapsing floors, the huge plume sweeping through everything in its monster-wave kind of flow. The actual impacts were probably too close. It made her eyes tear up and sting, and it made her cough. It felt like the entire area was transformed and every living thing was still reeling. She couldn't see beyond the edge of the roof. The lingering dots of slowly-dying-out flares below winked when hulking shadows darted past and some of the men fired wildly at those as if to keep them back, keep them at bay. Everyone knew what they'd do to you if they took you alive.

Lake activated her comms unit and it automatically paired to a two-way amplifier aboard the Lance. Captain Stern was on the other end, his voice an uptight growl.

"Lake, do you read? Come in!"

She cleared her throat as a bout of static resounded in the audio. "It's good to hear your voice, sir." She could barely hear her own. It sounded lost underneath a gentle hum.

"What's the situation? We saw rocket fire. All that's there is a cloud of dust risin' up. Any confirmed hits?"

"I think so, Cap'n. If you don't see anything on the horizon..." Lake coughed into her arm.

"Come on home, Lake. You did good."

"I'd like that, I would. But we're in a bit of trouble here, sir. Me and the boys ran into a wild pack of Covies. They're giving us the business."

There was a long pause on Stern's end. "I need you to hold on, Lake. How many? I can send reinforcements your way."

"Don't. There's too many to count, if that tells you anything. Oh we killed a lot of 'em, though. You should've seen it."

"Why didn't you radio for help?"

"In the fool-notion you maybe woulda come—"

"I would have, Lake. For the record. Still can."

"—I couldn't take that chance. For the record I still think you're a goddamn liar, and you're just saying that. Thanks anyway. You need to keep the company strong, together—for what's coming. I've seen it myself."

A man from Dog Company rolled his last grenade down the steps and shut the door. She felt it rumble, saw dust shake out of all kinds of seams and gaps.

"Lake, we've got air support inbound on your position, not far away. If you can just hold on a little longer..."

"Turn those birds back around. I don't think we'll be needing them."

"Listen to me, Lake—"

"You hear that? It's quiet... I think. Can't hear so good just now." Lake got to her feet and tried to see through the smoke. Then she felt the ground move—it nearly threw her off balance, she wobbled on her legs. She saw a flash of white-blue fire, an explosion that reached high into the air, whose light hurt her eyes even filtered through the slowly dissipating smoke cloud. It was all she could see, and then she felt the incredible heat wash over her. It clung to her.

Stern, at the balcony of the Shield command post had seen the first Covenant mortar round launch high into the air and come down. There was a long silence and Stern lost his nerve to speak. Then Lake came back on, unharmed because the shot went wide though not by much, but he knew she had seen what he did.

"Captain..."

"Lake, I'm here."

"Tell my mom something for me, the way you do. Tell her stories and make it sound like me. You're good at that. Send her my warmth and my fire and tell her I'm thinking of her. Please don't tell her how scared I am."

The soldiers at the command post watched, paralyzed, as the Covenant unleashed a barrage in the same direction as the first shot. Three fiery rounds hung in the air and slammed down a tidal crash, angry payback for what Lake had taken from them. The sound rolled down the highway and bounced off all the walls and all through those empty streets. Glass rattled in the command post. Stern felt it like a jolt of thunder creeping beyond some hill. In his ears though there was just muffled interference and dead air.

He looked at each man in the room, like he didn't know what to do with himself. He blinked a couple of times and sank into his chair, eyes still fixed on the horizon.

It was Shield's communications soldier who got him to snap-to. The man's hand flew to his earpiece and he said to Stern, "Captain, I'm getting chatter across the board from Sword and Charlie. They're engaging the enemy at points all down the line."

Beyond the highway Stern saw parts of the mostly darkened city light up in the distance—muzzle flash and illumination rounds up high into the night—and wavering pops traveled seconds later as the other companies out there fired off their heavy calibre machine guns.

He stood up and stepped inside the CP. "There's a Falcon still outbound to Lake's last known position. Get me a line to 'em and blast it on max power."

The man did so, and Stern heard the harsh whine and chop of the close-air support aircraft's rotors in his earpiece. "Smash-one-six to Steel Actual, read you loud and clear. One minute from the LZ."

"What do you see?"

"Visibility is nil. Switching to thermal... We've got warm bodies—got our own transponders down there, but they're not moving. We're seeing a lot of Covies on the ground, please advise."

Stern clenched his jaw.

"Steel Actual, request permission to take 'em out. Got rockets loaded up and ready, on your command… just say it and we'll blow 'em the fuck away."

Stern imagined the man's trigger finger inching closer and closer, if not already touching it. One bump, an uncontrollable dip and recovery to keep the chopper hovering, would be that all it took.

"Interrogative, Steel—"

"Smash-one-six, stand down," Stern said. If there were 906th men still down there, that was the best he could do. To his man on comms. he asked: "Is Shield in the fight?"

"Platoon leaders report all quiet."

Stern knew a hovering Falcon was a drool-worthy target. He didn't want it and its crew loitering for long in that area. "Smash-one-six," he said, "very quickly, get me a read on the Covies you see. What kind of force are we looking at? Where are they heading?"

"There's an armoured column forming up near the highway. Looking at another group moving around, bypassing it at bullseye oh-four-five, at four kilos."

Stern's eyes widened. Having moved the bulk of Shield Company to cover the highway in Sword's absence, they were way out of position to defend a wide flank. He wasn't wrong that the highway was critical for the Covenant's taking of this city but he wasn't equipped with nearly enough men to cover this much area. The Covenant had attempted to insert troops via their tough Phantom gunships to encircle his defenses in order to secure the highway ahead of the main force and that would have really cocked things up for him, but Lake had put a tentative stop to that plan. She'd done her job well. She bought Shield time as well as the whole battalion, and perhaps forced Stern to face the reality of what he was now staring down. He could not afford to be headstrong and proud here, or be vengeful and stand his ground. Downing three Phantoms was no small victory, but they would be replaced, dispatched from any nearby Covenant vessel. Maybe it was already happening.

"Roger, Smash. Return to base and report any other movements along your way. Steel Actual, out."

The Covenant, without air support temporarily, would just proceed on foot. They pulled the trigger and they were committed. Their rapid attack was now a brutal death march, and like Stern and Montclair had discussed, they would resort to their old tactics. Bloody, costly, and still so goddamn effective. There was always more of them than us. Even if Stern reached back and prevented the flank, his men would be exhausted if not mostly dead—in no condition to engage the bulk of the troops driving down the highway, who would arrive at the same time or not long after. And once the Covies had more aircraft arriving to do the real damage, without a working Lance it meant that Shield would be powerless to stop the onslaught. They would fall. Sword's position would be overrun, as would Charlie's, and this was without even knowing what those companies were facing on their respective sides if the Covenant were splitting up and carrying out similar manoeuvres.

They needed to re-establish the umbrella, and that meant tightening up battalion formation once more. This first line of defense was untenable—sticking it out was a gamble with lives and with even just one company unable to hold the line, the others would follow suit in short order and by that point, with the amount of uninhibited Covenant flooding in, retreat might not be an option. They had to give up a bit of ground. The sphere needed to shrink.

But for now there was still time. Lake saw to that, Stern thought bitterly.

He told the comms. soldier: "Patch me through on a broadcast freq, battalion-wide."

The technician hesitated and turned slowly towards his CO, checking for confirmation.

"Just do it."

He activated a switch at his portable console. "You're on, sir."

"Steel Actual to all units. Steel cannot hold, I say again: Steel cannot hold. We're falling back."

* * *

Men and women boarded up windows all throughout the hospital, drilling and firing off nail-guns into wooden slats and sheet metal, leaving enough of a gap to stick a rifle through. They piled sandbags up overtop nearly all of the ground-floor windows and doors, and mixed cement right there in the grand-looking lobby.

Moving through the hallway, Reed passed men lugging weaponry out the front door to the lines being reinforced outside, where all three rifle companies were holding position in a triangular perimeter down the streets from the hospital. They had rapidly pulled back, the Covenant not far behind them—on foot mostly, so the companies with their vehicles were able to outpace them back. Now the aliens held position just beyond sight range, grouping up; they were cautious after wandering into too much rearguard machine gun fire in reckless pursuit.

Still the Covenant sent scouts every so often in the past hour to suss out defenses but rooftop sniper teams prevented them from getting very close to the line and relaying back that valuable information. The companies garrisoned inside buildings parked their fighting vehicles, gun barrels pointed down the lengths of entire boulevards to fire just over the heads of the troops hunkered down on the street, their eyes and weapons forward. They towed concrete barriers into crooked formations, blocking off main roads to lure Covie vehicles into side streets and compromising positions. Shaped charges lining the gutter openings since week one of the battalion's deployment here would make the inroads unavailable for just about anything but a Wraith tank if everything did get overrun.

Reed crossed the lobby of the Abby, in front of the marble staircase. At the top of the stairs, two soldiers set up a fifty-cal machine gun behind a wall of sandbags aimed directly at the entrance and nothing else. He descended down an uglier flight of steps into the basement, or The Bunker. A section of the basement was cordoned off for refugees that were on an evac waiting list, and they were mostly all down here save for a number of men and women helping out upstairs. Troops made this section more defensible as well but if the Covenant got down here it probably meant that the battle was over.

He stopped outside Watson's office. Montclair was already here, sitting in the chair across from the lieutenant colonel. For all the bustle outside, the two battalion commanders seemed relaxed, like they were old friends catching up over coffee. They had their hasty, almost handwritten reports from their strategists before them but were ignored for now. Their demeanour was a nice change from the nervousness—although this was also a little disconcerting and unnatural. The quiet acceptance of what was coming was so, so close to the quiet grace of giving up. Montclair stood after Reed entered and saluted them, motioning for him to sit.

"How are we doing, Lieutenant?" Watson said.

"I sent along an itemized supplies report an hour ago, before all of this. I attached comments and recommendations, but if you want me to go over them..."

"No, that'll be fine. You have a good number two to take over your duties here, if need be?"

"Yes sir. Ask for Staff Sergeant Klepmann. She's a deal better at the job than me. You'll be in good hands."

Watson shared a look with Montclair, who now stood behind him. He said to Reed, "We have something for you to do."

"Name it, sir. Hospital's got no shortage of things to see to."

"Not here, not at the hospital." Watson pointed to his holo-display. "Out here."

"Three hour walk from here, to be specific," Montclair said.

"Am I being taken out of this fight?"

"In a sense that you won't be here. But you'll have your hands full."

Watson zoomed in on his display while Montclair handed Reed a stack of photographs. They were all focused on a building in a part of Old Mombasa they hadn't ventured far into yet, that was supposedly crawling with Covenant. Eight enormous satellite dishes were in the center, rusted and discoloured, perched on top of the building angled in different directions.

"What am I looking at? What's three hours out?"

"That's a section of the Troubadour deep space communications array. When the first Orbital Defense Platforms underwent testing, all communications with Earth routed through this place. It's an old technology now, been decommissioned for decades. But we still think it transmits and receives."

"Why's that?"

"Last week, CWO Fontaine from IRIS sent us a series of timelapse photos while he was figuring out how to solve our comms issue. It's something he was working on ever since getting heavier components delivered here became unfeasible. Not only does he think the technology is still active, but there might be people there too—flickin' switches and pullin' levers. Look at the position of those dishes between the ninth and tenth days. Those are recent shots."

Reed pursed his lips. The change was nearly negligible but it was there. Anything could have shifted those dishes from human hands to Covie, or maybe some nearby bombardment or just damned gusts of wind, even. Reed surmised where this was going and it was about as last-ditch as could be for the battalion, but he could see Watson and Montclair were hopeful. Again, Reed had faith in the two commanders but even he had to wonder what their limits were. Never before was the battalion stuck in such a desperate position and in such rapid pace. Individual squads and platoons were to be expected, but the head of the unit was always above water.

Unfolding before him now was the classic castle-rook play, a hasty move that usually meant danger was coming or nearby. When the strategists and battle-planners were themselves strapping on helmets and body armour, readying up to go into the line of fire (or in this case waiting until it came to them) they wouldn't be at their best. The pressure was a different kind, mixed a greater deal with fear of death and actual physical suffering, not just failure—disappointment from the higher ratings. This would be the trial that really counted. Trial by fury. The best units, no matter how tough, how brave, how ingenious, needed to square off with the Covenant in mortal goddamned combat.

"This one's pretty time sensitive, Lieutenant," Watson said. "I'd like to know now if you're up to the job."

"Yes sir, I am. Without a doubt I'm your man."

"Thought as much. You're a Helljumper, if I'm not mistaken. Few in this battalion would be right for this."

"I am wondering why it is you ain't sending boys from Shield Recon—real commandos. This is up their alley."

"That's just it. We are." Watson thumbed through his map. "We've been tight lipped so far but the truth is Shield Recon is already out there in the thick of things. But they're holding fire, keeping just outta sight. This is Stern's op—he gave life to it a while ago, I'm just kicking off the play. He radioed earlier and told us it might be worth our while to send you. Your old outfit's been based out of _this_ remote location since last week, a few kilometres away from the hospital, gathering intel on the best route to the Troubadour station, getting mission-ready. This's been in the cards for that long—we were considering snatching those comm dishes right off the roof of that building, ripping whatever hardware makes it tick outta the walls, trucking it all back here under fire if we had to. Now we've got no choice but to do it—or some version of it, anyway—ready or not. Might be you'll have to make the station your new home if the hospital... goes dark. No Shield Company with you, either, just a lurp—two dozen guys. But you vetted 'em, and you trained 'em. That might even things up."

"I'll vouch for 'em, sure, but where do I fit into all this? Johnny Wyatt's a capable lead man."

"Shield Recon's got active comms, last I heard: a manpack antenna big enough for us to talk to 'em in coded bursts, but they don't keep it active all hours of the day. If the Covies spot it or pick up our waves, I don't much fancy their chances of getting out of the lion's den in any recognizable shape or form. They're that deep in there. Don't move, don't breathe kinda situation."

Reed nodded. During the long spring months of the forested Aurelia campaign, Recon was sent ahead of the companies far behind enemy lines and went weeks without contact, carrying out guerilla-styled attacks to soften Covie up for the battalion's main thrusts. They slept in the mud and never lit a fire for light or warmth, and jumped every time the leaves rustled—they lived out of four-foot spiderholes covered with brush waiting for Covie to amble by. Sometimes they were there waiting to ambush their weary enemies tired and worn down from the nonstop rain, but more often they were there to hide from those vicious, eager war-parties who came searching, who were good at looking and even better at killing, and it was those times they prayed Covie wouldn't take a wrong step and crash down on their heads.

Now they were hidden away somewhere in the city, a ghost Apex, surrounded by Covie who was mobilizing and on the warpath. Shield Recon wouldn't fire a shot but god damn they were in it.

Watson continued, "Communications black-out means they're as good as deaf and blind to what's going on here. Maybe they've noticed more enemy activity, but I'll bet those men—your men—have enough plate discipline to hold off a swing, stick to the agreed-upon plan. Which means we won't hear from them 'til morning the earliest and that's a damned wishful thought. So, it's too long a wait in every scenario. The hospital could be gone by then."

"So you need me to reach 'em. Get them moving."

"That's right. Once you link up with Shield Recon, they'll know the area better than you will. They've got a Battalion comms specialist with them as well. You'll rely on his expertise. Get in contact with IRIS, inform Nine-oh-sixth HQ of what's happening. Their assets are impressive."

"Exactly." Reed cocked an eyebrow at them. "What are they waiting for?"

"They'll figure out the situation without our help—question is if that'll be too late since Voi is moreso the focus than here. They're gonna need far more detailed info about Mombasa than just overhead imagery anyway… from a person here on the ground."

Montclair explained: "We sent drones but the Covenant shot 'em all down. That's another indicator, I'll add. Anyway, if we can't blow the whistle at IRIS, well, nothing is salvaged and we all die."

"I'm not sure what Mattis can do, but we've had an air-evacuation contingency planned since the start," Watson said. "It's not near what we'll need to get everyone out in one go, but it's better than nothing. Gives us something to hold on for..." Watson folded his hands and looked down at his desk. He said quietly, "A number of our people gave up their lives today so we could have a window of time to prepare for this Covie push. I intend to make the most of it. Won't be long until they have us completely surrounded and get close-air support up and running again. But by then we'll be dug in, and we'll thrash 'em every step of the way up them steps. And 'til that happens, there's still gaps in their line. Big enough for you and maybe a squad to fit through. You'll have to move smart and quiet. Isn't any calling home for bail money and a ride once you're in it."

"Understood."

"Do you have a team in mind?"

"I do."

"Go and get 'em. Gear up and head out as soon as you're able. Covies are still sending scouts at us, feeling us out. Don't know when that'll stop but when it does, you won't want to be here."

"You're wrong about that, sir," Reed said. "No place I'd rather be. Feel especially like I'm running out on you, time you need me most. On the line, with my rifle—and this here's the line. This place, these halls."

"Need you more out there than in here, Lieutenant. There are a damn lot of what-ifs you'll be askin'. I asked the same. Best we can do is keep our heads down and hope one of us is the better gambler. So I say this with all sincerity: good luck."

"Thank you, sir. To both of us." Reed looked to the door to leave but stopped. "I haven't heard a thing from the other companies, but... who'd we lose out there? The ones who bought us this brief gasp of air 'fore the plunge."

"A platoon sergeant from Shield and seven men from Dog Company," Watson said.

Montclair cleared her throat. "I didn't want to be the one to tell you—" She bowed her head just a degree. "—but it was Sergeant Lake."

Reed's throat tightened. He kept his face straight though.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Had a feeling you two were close. We're in her debt. She held the line as long as she could, did some real damage—if she didn't, we might not be havin' a conversation here at all."

"Yes, ma'am. I do believe that." Reed looked at the floor. When neither senior officer said anything else, he spoke up. "Guess it's about that time."

Watson stood. "If I don't see you again, Lieutenant, it's been an honour."

"Likewise, sir—ma'am." Reed glanced in Montclair's direction as he and Watson shook hands. "If it means anything comin' from me, I wouldn't have done Mombasa any different. That means sticking through it as long as we did, I don't feel no regret. In the hands of anyone else, we wouldn't have done half the good we managed to. So that's something."

"They were always gonna have to drag us out by our ankles, kickin' and screamin'," Watson said. "—Mattis and whoever else wants some."

Montclair smirked. "A-goddamn-men."

They shared a quiet chuckle, and then Reed set off.

Fifteen minutes later, after grabbing Corporal Woodrow from his new duties around Dog Company—heavy lifting, sorting, taking inventory... a waste of his abilities, but Reed had wanted Doll Fraser to keep an eye on him because there was something a little off about him, he was unhinged, you could see it in his eyes—they headed back out of the lobby of the hospital. Woodrow was the only man Reed chose and it was no surprise Woodrow went right along with it. They needed to travel light and any more than two men might have been unwieldy for what Watson had in mind.

Woodrow had proven himself yesterday, certainly more than any soldier still at the Abby and not on the frontline with their companies, but Reed didn't know him personally. Perhaps this was better, that he had no attachment to him. That he was not Nine-oh-six, not officially. Because who could tell what might happen out there? Whatever happened, the objective—the mission—would need to come first. Reed understood that (or he liked to think he did) and though he never got a straight answer about how Woodrow's spotter, Delonge, had died next to him during the firefight yesterday, he suspected Woodrow understood the exact same. This was good. He was hardened the same way.

They carried only rifles, ammunition, water and amino pills. In addition, Woodrow had a tightly rolled-up carrying case slung across his back, the partially disassembled S2-anti materiel rifle the only anti-vehicle weaponry they would have handy if it escalated to that point.

As they left the hospital, they came across Captain Stern who paced around outside on the steps, cigarette in a shaky hand. He'd been waiting for Reed. Without a word he handed the lieutenant a slightly crumpled, slightly damp piece of paper. Reed straightened it out to reveal a set of GPS coordinates.

He met Stern's eyes. "This isn't..."

"It's where she was," Stern said. "Not out of your way."

"Might be crawling with Covie."

"Whole fuckin' city is—why I wanted you in particular to do it. If anyone could..." When Reed hesitated, Stern said, softer this time, "Please."

"There even anything left of her?"

"You listen. I didn't fuckin' get her killed, Reed."

"No, I guess you didn't. Yet I feel the urge to make you get down on all fours and pick your teeth up out the gutter all the same, maybe for all them else that you did too."

Stern reiterated, "—Not her. Not this one."

"So Covie's gonna foot the bill like usual. They take what you give, you know that right?"

"It was fucked up, Reed. How could I have known she was going to stay?"

"You'd a called her a coward to her face the moment she come home."

"I wouldn't do that."

"She fuckin' stayed 'cause it's what you woulda done—or _said_ you woulda done in front of the boys. _Her_ boys! She stayed 'cause you woulda taken them from her, cast her out, stripped her of everything good she once did. You would've made them shame her the way you do. 'Ought not be so weak.' 'Always need to do better.' You fuckin' poisoned her."

"She did it for the battalion. I never asked her to but she did it herself. She knew. She stepped up and she went swinging. If they'd broken through—caught us looking—maybe you and me wouldn't be having this conversation. Maybe we'd be dead."

"Well Cap'n we can't know that. We can't ever know that. So don't take too much solace in that, makin' yourself fuckin' feel better and justified. You make up a story about how she was proud to die for her comp'ny and you fire everyone up over it and I'll come back and finish what the fuck Fraser started and I hit a lot harder than she does."

"You didn't hear her, the moments before... A person's different. —She went graceful, Reed. I was right with her. She wasn't alone."

"You stop talking—I swear. You take me out back and shoot me, but before that you'll get a beating you deserved from the start."

"I told it to you already, and I'll say nothing more. I don't give a shit if you believe me or not."

Woodrow, waiting patiently off to the side, now stepped in. He'd set down his S2-rifle case, had both hands free and was ready for anything. He wasn't looking to take a punch to the mouth, especially not from the lieutenant. He laid one firm hand across Reed's arm and put himself between the two officers, the sweaty referee sending them back to their corners. Stern wasn't going to fight. He looked defeated, his normally proud head now hanging low, barely able to meet Reed's eyes.

"We're leaving," Woodrow said to the lieutenant. A terse command, not a suggestion.

Reed broke his gaze and took a step back.

Stern nodded. "You two got a walk ahead of you."

"Yeah."

The captain just finished off his cigarette.

Still glowering, Reed added, "You wanted for some big action. The both of you. Now you've got it."

"We're right where we're supposed to be," Stern said. He scraped the ashy butt across the building's mud-brick exterior, dropped it on the ground and began to walk off. "Whatever you find out there, bring her home."

Reed tucked the note into his vest while Stern headed into the hospital and down into The Bunker. Woodrow tugged the S2-rifle case over his shoulder and pulled the straps tight. They were going on foot.

Saying nothing about what just happened, they walked past the burgeoning defensive positions on the street and in the surrounding buildings—the last line of resistance before enemies reached the hospital proper. A few blocks farther out was the perimeter the rifle companies were establishing, digging in and setting up. Woodrow and Reed moved alongside small groups of men carrying anti-tank weapons, grimly headed towards the barricades—tank buster squads. These soldiers were assigned to travel as deep into the tidal advance of oncoming enemy forces as they could without detection with the sole job of locating and knocking out any Covie armour or artillery pieces that drew near. As they approached the barricades, the makeshift gate (miscellaneous steel welded together at various angles and joints and affectionately called The Porcupine) was hauled aside in a small shower of sparks by a warthog and four men. Soldiers in bunches all the way up to the gate lining the curb reached out and touched Reed's shoulder and tapped on his helmet.

"Good luck, Reed," they said. "He's got somethin' up his sleeve. You get 'em, LT."

When they were out, the troops on the line pushed the metal gate back in place behind them, peered into the oppressive night and readied their rifles and machine guns for whatever was coming. The groups of men who were leaving as well, the tank hunters, headed off in separate directions, breaking away from the staggered group with quiet goodbyes gradually until Woodrow and Reed were the only ones continuing forward, walking down this street into the lightless city.

Reed said to Woodrow, "How 'bout you take point."

Woodrow moved ahead of him and didn't make a fuss.

* * *

In the hospital down in the basement—the boiler room, to be precise—men from the battalion's disciplinary outfit, Dog Company's chain-gang broke through the concrete to whatever there was below with pickaxes and jackhammers. Part of the chain-gang was outside digging trenches while others were here scooping bits of smashed cement and rocks into sandbags and bins. Getting through the soft, chewy layer of black-top pavement outside was more time consuming than hacking up the relatively more brittle floor in here, and there was no time to lose. They were careful to avoid the plumbing but this was an old hospital and the exposed pipes leaked all over the place from many years of use and fatigue. The commotion agitated the liquids pooling higher and higher like rapids did downstream before the fall. Soaked, sooty men continued scraping and shoveling away.

"The day of judgment is nearly here!" The fat master sergeant in charge of the chain-gang cried out as he ambled back and forth while the men dug into the ground, his loaded rifle resting in the crook of his arm. "Hard work liberates the soul, and the reckoning is upon us, boys and girls! Sure as I know there's Heaven and Hell, you animals are bound for eternal damnation! On the off-chance you ever meet The Man, you tell him ol' Sarn't McCann sent ya," he said in his shrill drawl, still inexplicably audible over the noise of metal tools striking rock and pushing gravel. "For McCann did his gol'darn best to keep you righteous, keep you from the degenerate path you was on that ended your sorry asses up in this outfit. He tried to redeem you in His eyes. Lord, did he try!"

A new group of soldiers filed down into the depths of the basement, in from the work they were doing outside. They each grabbed tools from a pile and got to work. McCann kept rambling on as he handed out headlamps and they climbed down into the growing pits that were now ankle deep with brown water and becoming something of a bubbly, rich slurry. He slapped a lamp into the hands of Private Doll Fraser who was next in line, her face already dusted white, slick skin wet from digging holes already for hours outside, her lips cracked and scowling.

Maybe it was the dehydration but she was beginning to feel a sort of bond between her and the rest of these men who surrounded her, she found herself thinking. They were her people more than anyone in the battalion. The ones who stood up for what they believed and did something about it, these men who got even for her mate Henry Shannon—may he bloody well rest in peace. They were right there beside her tossing dirt well into the evening, toiling like they were supposed to. These were the men she thought she would be dying beside tonight when the Covies busted in here and hopefully butchered fat McCann first and shut him up so they could all watch before it was their turn. It would be satisfying and worth it. And fuck Reed for sending her here again, condemning her to this hell, having to do this work and listen to this shit. She thought Reed of all people would have her back, but he didn't. And it confirmed what she probably already knew: he's an officer now. One of them. So where'd that leave them, the enlisted men?

Just throw-away pieces to soak up bullets. No different from anywhere else, like the men on the approach to Voi that she'd managed to escape—just shut up and die. At the mercy of her superiors who had all kinds of grand ideas and expected them to lay down their lives for these people running the hospital, those maybe-murderers, and the civvies who did nothing but ask for more more more. This late in the war there was no better tomorrow for the civilians the soldiers were all dying for. A similar fate for all people was days away, if not hours.

Fuck that, and fuck Reed wherever he was. She'd get at him for this.

And she hoped Woody was all right, wherever he was. He wasn't Nine-oh-six.

The water that sprung from rotting, holey pipes touched her skin, raining down. It drenched her, ran down the back of her neck.

Meanwhile McCann howled, "Hard work puts you back in the grace o' God! The last chance you get 'fore we get off this wretched Earth and that's the truth! Y'alls gonna die down here so dig deep! Every drop of sweat you spill expels yer sins and peee-yorifies the soul! Don't you want to be clean? Don't you want to be saved, you devils?—"

Only two places soldiers like her end up: chain-gang or dead. She flicked on her headlamp and with a huge overhead swing of her pickaxe she tore into the loose dirt wall, this cracked foundation underneath that rickety, falling-apart hospital.

"—Reckoning's a-comin' and I for one cannot hardly fuckin' wait!"

END OF EPISODE

36,573 words


End file.
